Resolving remote services to a tier can put the metrics for the services into an element of the AppDynamics application model that may provide a more useful view of the activities of the services in flow maps.
The tier may already exist in the business application model or you can create a new one. If it exists, after you resolve the backend to a tier it no longer appears as a backend icon in the flow maps.
AppDynamics automatically resolves some backends to tiers. In general, these are custom backends or HTTP, RMI, Thrift or web services, which are usually logically linked to a tier. If you want to see the backend on its own, you can unresolve it to display it on the flow map.
When to Resolve Backends to a Tier
You may want to resolve a backend to a tier if it represents a more logical view of your environment, for example, if a database runs on the same machine as an application server. Another reason to resolve backends to a tier is to combine similar backends.
For example, if there appear to be multiple databases that are actually the same database using different namespaces, the default flow map is likely to display the databases separately. You can resolve the database backends to a new tier of type "Database Server" so they display as one and the tier metrics are together. If a backend is taken out, the historical data for the backend is retained at the tier level.
Resolving Backends to Tiers
You can resolve a backend to a tier from the backend's dashboard page, either its Remote Service Dashboard or Database Dashboard. In the database dashboard, from the Actions menu, click Resolve Backend to Tier and select an existing tier or create a new one. Similarly, you can see backends that are associated with a tier and unresolve a backend from the action menu for the Tier dashboard.
Deleting the backend from the tier causes it to re-appear as an unresolved backend in the flow map or resolve it to a different tier.