Viewing topology history

You can view the history of a topology to compare and contrast the current topology with historical versions to see how the topology has changed.

Before you begin

You must have an existing topology. For more information about rendering a topology, see Rendering (visualizing) a topology.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps console.

  2. From the main navigation, click Resource management.

    On the Resource management dashboard, applications, resource groups and resources are presented on separate tabs. In addition, the dashboard is divided into 'All applications results' and 'Favorites' sections. You can display favorite applications and resource groups either as cards or in a table. Resources are always displayed in a table, and cannot be designated as favorites.

  3. Search for the resource or resource group to find the topology that you want to view.

    As you type in a search term, such as a name, tag, entity type or unique Id, a drop-down list is displayed with suggested search terms that exist in the topology service. If you select one of the suggested results, the Search Results page is displayed listing possible resource results. The Results are listed under separate Resources and Resource groups tabs.

    • If the resource that you are searching for is unique, the resource can be included in the drop-down list of suggestions. If you are confident that the listed suggestion is the resource that you are searching for, you can click the View topology for the closest matching resource icon in the drop-down list to render the topology for the closest matching resource to that suggestion.

    • Optional: If the resource that you are looking for might be deleted, you can select Include deleted resources (unless an administrator disables this feature). When this toggle is enabled, the search results include any deleted resources. Deleted templates or resource groups are not included in any search results. Deleted resources are marked as deleted and include the date and time that they were deleted. If you click View topology, the resource topology is displayed with the history timeline open. The timeline is set to 1 ms before the resource was deleted. When you close the timeline, the topology is cleared. When you search for resources with a previous point in time set in the history timeline, deleted resources are not returned and the toggle to include them is not available.

    • For each result, the name, type and other properties are displayed. You can expand a search result entry for more details, such as its status and any associated severity levels, or when the resource was previously updated. If a status other than clear exists for a search result, the maximum severity is displayed.

    • Tip: You can perform more complex searches, such as searching with multiple search terms. For more information about advanced query syntax, see the topology query reference topic.

  4. Click View topology.

Note When viewing a topology, you can click View Legend to open a Help panel that describes the topology's visual elements.

You can display and refine the topology history in a number of ways:

  • Delta mode

    You can enable and disable delta by using the Delta toggle in the topology navigation toolbar.

    When Delta mode is On, differences in topology are displayed as purple plus or minus symbols next to the affected resource.

    When Delta mode is On with History mode On, you can compare two time points to view differences in topology. Historical change indicators (blue dots) are displayed next to each affected resource.

    Note: For efficiency reasons, historical change indicators are only displayed for topologies with fifty or fewer resources. You can decrease, but not increase, this default by changing the Historical Change Threshold. For more information, see Defining advanced topology settings.

    • Lock time pin

      On the timeline graph, click the Lock icon on a time pin's head to lock a time point in place as a reference point for the comparison. You can then use the second time slider to view topology changes in comparison to the locked point in time.

    • Compare resource properties

      Click Resource details on a resource's context menu to compare the resource's data at the two selected time points. You can view and compare the property names and values in table format, or raw JSON format.

  • History timeline

    You open the Topology History toolbar using the Timeline toggle in the Topology Visualization toolbar (on the left).

    Note: Resources with a large amount of history may take longer to display.

    You use the time pins to control the topology shown. When you move the pins, the topology updates to show the current topology representation.

    While in delta mode you can move both pins to show a comparison between the earliest pin and the latest. The timeline shows the historic changes for a single selected resource, which is indicated in the timeline title. You can lock one of the time pins in place to be a reference point.

    When you first display the history timeline, coach marks (or tooltips) are displayed, which contain helpful information about the timeline functionality. You can scroll through these, or switch them off (or on again) as required.

    To view the timeline for a different resource, you click it, and the heading above the timeline changes to display the name of the selected resource. If you click the heading, the topology centers (and zooms into) the selected resource.

    The history timeline is displayed above a secondary time bar, which displays a larger time segment and indicates how much of it is depicted in the main timeline. You can use the jump buttons to move back and forth along the timeline, or jump to the current time.

    You can use the time picker, which opens a calendar and clock, to move to a specific second in time.

    To view changes made during a specific time period, use the two time sliders to set the time period. You can zoom in and out to increase or decrease the granularity using the + and - buttons on the right, or by double-clicking within a timeframe. The most granular level you can display is an interval of 1 second. The granularity is depicted with time indicators and parallel bars, which form buckets that contain the recorded resource change event details.

    The timeline displays changes to a resource's state, properties, and its relationships with other resources. These resource changes are displayed through color-coded bars and dash lines, and are elaborated on in a tooltip displayed when you hover over the change.

    You can exclude one or more of these elements from displaying:

    • Relationships

      This toggle displays or hides the number of relationships with neighboring resources, and whether the relationships were changed. Examples of this include the removal or addition of a relationship, or the modification of an existing relationship.

    • State

      This toggle displays or hides the number of resource state changes that a resource has undergone.

    • Property

      This toggle displays or hides the number of times that resource properties were changed. Each time that at least one property was changed is displayed as one property change event regardless of whether one or more properties were changed at the time.