Relationship Crossroads

[mnp123]

Hello Everyone,
We are using a product giving the relationship information on CI for Upstream and Downstream. I am somewhat confused on upstream and downstream words. When I use this in context of English language it tells me that from Switch to Application is a downstream impact in terms of relationship but when I look from OSI model it seems like it is upstream relationship from Switch to application. Not sure ITIL is providing this in-depth information but can someone provide the inside information how they are doing in their company.

Really appreciate your help

[UKVIKING]

You need to ask the people who produced the products for the answer

I dont use upstream or downstream as I cant fit in the canoe and there are too many waterfalls and rocks

On a related note, you have it right.. if you look from the end user usign an applciation to the server that produces the application you are looking down....
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter

[Cotswolddave]

Another convention is use which means the same is parent/child. For instance for service mapping a pyramid structure similar to the following may be used.

1. business process
2. services
3. systems or application
4. virtual hosts (VM, LPAR, partitions)
5. hardware

In practice it is a design choice and some of the layers may be expanded to suit the communication needs of change and incident processes.

The trouble is, you would map an organisation as an org chart, a location as a drill down to a room from a site etc. So when you try getting more complex by mapping services or systems to users or locations you end with a mess.

If you start mapping shared infrastructure devices such as switches, sans and other resilent devices it becomes so tangled as to be ineffective. If you have to deliver a CMDB that supports service impact understanding then keep it small, focus on key systems and it might deliver.

dave