TASM comes with a default state matrix. You will probably want to expand this for your environment.
A state matrix shows the intersection between planned environments and health conditions. The intersection of these two categories is a state.
- Health conditions: This shows system health. When a node is down, you might want more restrictive rules. Health conditions appear on the vertical axis of the matrix. You may want to define two or three different health conditions. This is the "what" category.
- Planned environments: This shows the different processing windows that a system is expected to accommodate, such as, night and day, weekday and weekend, month-end, or year-end. Planned environments are on the horizontal axis of the state matrix. This is the "when" category.
The state matrix lets you enforce different rules in different circumstances. Multiple planned environment and health condition pairs can be associated with the same state.
First, use Viewpoint Workload Designer to define different states. Then drag and drop each state into the location in the state matrix where you want it to be active. The same state can be used many times. The following figure shows a simple but effective state matrix.
The default state matrix is 1 x 1. A planned environment called Always is defined for 24 hours x 365 days a year, and a health condition called Normal is perpetually in effect. This combination has a default state called Base. If there are multiple planned environments and health conditions, each unique pair can have a unique state. Each state can have unique throttle limits and workload attributes. Only one state is active at a time, based on the highest-severity health condition and highest-precedent planned environment in effect.
When TASM evaluates the planned environments to see which one should be active, it searches from the right-most state (the one with the highest precedence) and moves left, stopping at the first planned environment that fits the criteria. For health conditions, the search starts at the bottom, with the one with the highest severity, moves up, and stops at the first health condition that qualifies. That way, if more than one of those entities is a candidate for being active, TASM selects the one that is most important or most critical first.