Root Cause and Impact Analysis

The root cause operation can quickly identify the underlying reduction keys of edges that contribute to an element’s current operational status. The impact analysis operation identifies all business services that are affected by a given element. Both of these options are available in the topology map’s context menu when you visualize business services.

Example

The following example shows how to identify the root cause of a critical status on the hop service. You can use the business service’s context menu to investigate the root cause:

Meridian UI displaying the topology map, with a context menu overlaid. Root Cause Analysis is highlighted.

Figure 1. View before performing root cause analysis

The topology map focuses only on elements that affect the operational status of a selected business service. Here, the Page Sequence Monitor—which lets the user log in—is down, and has set the business service to Critical status:

Meridian UI displaying the topology map, with two elements

Figure 2. View after performing root cause analysis

You can also identify which business services from a specific edge are affected by selecting Impact Analysis from the context menu:

Meridian UI displaying the topology map, with a context menu overlaid. Impact Analysis is highlighted.

Figure 3. View before performing impact analysis

In this example, the business services for the login, shop, and payment workflows are affected if the HTTP service is unavailable:

Meridian UI displaying the topology map, with five elements.

Figure 4. View after performing impact analysis