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Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 6:09 am Post subject: CMDB with Change Management
I was taught that the CMDB should be supported by your Change Management tool. This was interpreted as meaning that those elements that you wanted to control in the CMDB should be updated via the Change Management tool. For example, if a network printer was deemed a CI, and a key artifact for control was the IP address, the IP address would be change via the Change process, so that the update to the CMDB for the artifact would come from the Change tool.
First... is this the same understanding of others?
Second... providing this understanding is correct, why don't today's tools support this activity?
I've yet to see any Change tool that supports this level of integration with the CMDB. One of the biggest issues I've run into with the two attempted Configuration Management implementations has been the fact that maintaining the CMDB becomes an additional manual chore that management gives up on.
The premise of the question is irrelevant unless tools are capable of doing that in the first place. Look at the reality of the cmdb, it's more likely to be federated meaning you would need your Change tool to be able to change config back 'up stream' to many sources.
I haven't come across a system that can do that yet so this means the strenght of your process is even more significant.
Cheers,
UJ _________________ Did I just say that out loud?
Joined: Sep 16, 2006 Posts: 3110 Location: London, UK
Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 6:18 pm Post subject:
If I recall my ITIL, it said nothing about tools. It said processes should be linked.
like
The incident process should only be applied to CIs that are in the CMDB so that you only do trouble calls on authorized etc.
Change & Release mgmt process should be applied to the CIs in the CMDB so thta etc
while this implies tools, it does not directly refer to tools because then you can get to the many cackles of which tool and how _________________ John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)
Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter
I appreciate the feedback from both of you and have valued both your comments in the past to various posts.
I'm comfortable with my process integration design and that a CMDB is a federation of data repositories. My struggle is with with the inability to automate components of the integration between Change and Config.
My thought is that a tool should be able to support the basic interaction between Change and Config at least to the extent of the source data that establishes 1) identification of the CI, 2) its status relative to the production environment, and 3) its relationship to business services. To me this would form the basis for the relationships to the other data repositories of the CMDB.
To me this no different than the establishment of a customer profile with the initiation of a financial transaction. I would do this for a business operation, so why not for an IT operation?
Does anyone have any suggestions or thoughts on this basic level of support between process activities?
Ok Scott, so if I understand right, you're basically talking about automatically updating some sort of 'headline' information, e.g. Server status = 'on' or off', Printer ABC123 = 3rd Floor, or account X = 'active' or 'inactive'.
That kind of thing?
UJ _________________ Did I just say that out loud?
Joined: Sep 16, 2006 Posts: 3110 Location: London, UK
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 7:06 pm Post subject:
In my mind, the CMDB is a reference tool.
Autodiscovery tools and auto configuration control tools - should be used to confirm . verify and validate the existing information in the CMDB
These tools should not auto-populate the CMDB as then you get a lot of specious data.
The CMDB should changed / updated only when the CHange request has been processed for the change _________________ John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)
Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter
The fundamental necessity of the CMDB is to be 'one true source' of information. This suggests maintain, where possible, one point of access for data change.
If you find a tool that can do this via a change management console, and with a 100% guarantee then please let me know!
UJ _________________ Did I just say that out loud?
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