Creating an impact dependency establishes a relationship between resources. The resources are classified as dependency resources and dependent resources.
Dependency resource: This is a resource that other resources depend upon to operate. An issue in a dependency resource may impact resources which are dependent on it when the severity of impact is high. This is called an upstream resource. For example, a network problem in ESXi server host may impact VMware resources dependent on the server. As a result, multiple alerts would cause high-alert noise. Correlating these alerts with dependency resources helps to identify and resolve the root alert.
Dependent resource: This is a resource that depends on another resource to operate. An issue in a dependent resource may impact the dependency resource when the severity of impact is low. This is called a downstream resource.
Using dependency and dependent resources helps identify the root cause of an alert when alerts are correlated. This reduces the amount of alert noise and helps to focus on the root alert.