How Does SAS IT Resource Management Work?

SAS IT Resource Management provides the processes and the supporting technology that are required to regularly collect, aggregate, analyze, and report on the IT performance data that is vital to the management of the IT infrastructure. For data sources that are supported by SAS IT Resource Management, the Adapter Setup wizard guides the user through a series of specific choices that describe how that data is to be aggregated, analyzed, and reported on.

The following steps are necessary to gather and analyze data using SAS IT Resource Management:

Collect and stage the raw data about a resource.

IT performance data is information about IT resources, such as hardware, operating system software, virtual systems, networks, Web servers, databases, and applications. Raw (or unprocessed) data about the usage, availability, or performance of these resources is generated by the logging mechanisms that are inherent to IT resources or is created by the Enterprise Systems Management tools that are used to manage the IT infrastructure. All of the data that is managed and analyzed by SAS IT Resource Management is first staged. The adapter's staging code performs functions such as reading the raw data source, normalizing measurement units, separating into tables based on domain categories, generating computed columns, and checking for and managing duplicate data. Staging is performed by SAS IT Resource Management transformations that are set up in SAS Data Integration Studio.

For a list of the adapters that SAS IT Resource Management supports, see Supported Adapters in SAS IT Resource Management: Administator's Guide.
Aggregate the staged tables.

After the raw data is staged, it can be input to the aggregation step. Aggregation transformations can generate simple aggregation or summarized aggregation tables. Simple aggregations read data from the staged table and append that new data to an existing table without undergoing any summarization. Summarized aggregations read data from a staged table and then categorize and aggregate that data according to the specifications of the aggregation transformation. Aggregation transformations are created, updated, and deployed for execution using the SAS IT Resource Management client.

After the performance data has been aggregated, it is ready for the information mapping and reporting processes.
Generate information maps.

SAS IT Resource management generates transformations that create information maps that reference the tables of data that are generated by that adapter's aggregation transformations. Information maps provide clearly labeled analysis and report-ready references for all data fields that are used to create and view reports. Information maps can be used in SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence applications such as SAS Web Report Studio and SAS BI Dashboard. They generate reports that provide domain intelligence about the data that is available for each adapter.
Define and run reports.

SAS Enterprise Guide, described below, generates reports by using information maps or by directly accessing data in SAS tables. The business friendly information maps that are provided by SAS IT Resource Management are the recommended data sources for all reporting activity.

In SAS Enterprise Guide, the ITRM gallery task can be selected. When the gallery task is run, it creates a report definition that is stored on the SAS Metadata Server. SAS IT Resource Management Client provides features that enable report definitions to be selected, and creates the jobs that will run these reports.
Create galleries.

SAS IT Resource Management provides the Gallery Manager to organize and view collections of reports called galleries. The contents of a gallery are determined by selecting filter values that are available for those reports that are created by SAS IT Resource Management. In the Gallery Manager, performance analysts and information consumers can access the reports that were created by report definitions and stored on the SAS Content Server. They can create filters that subset the available reports, and view the resulting reports on a browser.

Note: The jobs that execute these transformations can run interactively, but more typically they are scheduled to run in batch mode.

In addition, ad hoc reporting is provided through several SAS products. Documentation for these products is available at http://support.sas.com/documentation/index.html.

SAS Enterprise Guide, which is a Windows application, accesses data directly or uses information maps to select and report on data.
SAS Web Report Studio, which has a Web-based interface, uses information maps to select and report on data.
SAS BI Dashboard, which is an easy to administer and easy to use Web interface that enables you to use dashboards to monitor key performance indicators that convey how well resources are performing.
SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office enables SAS functionality to be accessed directly from the menus and toolbars of Microsoft Office products.

Performance analysts and information consumers who frequently work with Microsoft Office products can access the analysis and report-ready data that is created by SAS IT Resource Management.

Note: Reports that are created with SAS Web Report Studio, SAS BI Dashboard, or with stored processes can be viewed on a browser through SAS Information Delivery Portal.

For more detailed information about these tasks, see the SAS IT Resource Management: Administator's Guide and the SAS IT Resource Management: Reporting Guide.