ITSI and non-host entities

[cmeo]

Does anyone have an examples of ITSI entities that aren't hosts. The docs state that these entities can be:

physical or virtual hosts;
network devices;
users (AD/LDAP user);
storage systems, volumes;
operating system processes;
software application (db, web server, business app);
application process instances (for example, 2 instances of the same web server application is 2 separate entities).

So how would you set up e.g. a user or application process instance, especially where you might have multiple process instances? Also bearing in mind that things like JBOSS may have multiple instances only differentiated far along a long command line, is there any limit on the length of the command line that ITSI will have to inspect?

[thejeffreystone]

Yes. We have a base search that creates an entity value based on two fields (a location code and a numeric value representing a specific place at that location) and then output the KPIs by that entity value. Then we link our entities to our service using a wild card - location-*

As long as you can match the KPI values from the base search to the entities in the service I think you can use whatever you want.

[JykkeDaMan]

I'm wondering the same thing, since I cannot figure out the real use cases for the Entities other than hosts.
Where and how can I use my custom entities, if they are for example processes?
So far I have seen the Entities in Service Analyzer KPI drill down, which does the splitting just fine by the base search without any real Entities defined. So I'm wondering why should I create the Entities and which are the real use cases and advantages of doing so. Cannot find any real use case examples.