Infrastructures & Applications

[Kathy]

Hi, asking for help again here.

I'm not very clear about the relationship roles between infrastructures and applications ,as they are frequently involved in ITIL.
Would anybody pls give me some instructions or suggestions ?

Thank you in advantage !

Best Regards,
Kathy

[Guerino1]

Hi Kathy,

It depends on who you ask. I'll give you my own perspectives.

In short "Software Applications run on Hardware Servers" or Software Assets leverage Hardware Assets.

The longer answer is a bit more complicated. I don't know if you're interested but I'll throw it out here, just in case:

There are really two different things: Products and Assets.

A Product is a specification or a definition. An Asset is a specific instance of a specific Product.

A hardware example is that you have the definition of a "Server Model XYZ" that you can read about on a web site or from a spec catalog. You may have 1000 of these servers in your enterprise. They are all Assets and specific "instances" of this Product that are physical and tangible.

Software (i.e. Applications) is a little different....

A software example is that you have a Product that is called "My Business Calculation System". Again, this is a Product spec or definition. You may have 5 instances of this system running "on" one or more of the hardware servers. These 5 software instances are "virtual" and non-tangible Assets.

Now, it gets interesting...

The software Product is called "My Business Calculation System"
The 5 software instances are labeled: S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5 and are software Assets.

This means that each software Asset (instance) has a relationship back to the reference Product "My Business Calculation System".

The hardware Product is called "Server Model XYZ"
The 5 servers that the software instances are running on are H1, H2, H3, H4, and H5 and are hardware Assets.

this means that each hardware Asset (instance) has a relationship back to the reference Product "Server Model XYZ".

The application/software instances run on the hardware instances. (Let's make it easy and say that S1 runs on H1, S2 on H2, etc. although, it can get very complicated when dealing with large scale distributed systems.) In this case, there is a relationship between each software instance and each hardware instance that it runs on.

S1 has a relationship to H1 (or vice versa)
S2 has a relationship to H2 (or vice versa)
etc.

Therefore, if it's done correctly, you have complete traceability between all Assets and all Products. Some Assets are instances of hardware, some of software. Some Products are hardware, some are software.

This is the foundation for a good CMDB.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
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[Edited by Admin to remove link]

[Kathy]

Thanks Guerino1, from what you said, it seems to me that the applications equal to software while infrastructures equl to hardware,do they?

However, I understand what you mean by saying about "products and assets".


Besides, I want to know more aspects about the relationships between applications and infrastructures, as it's a big task for me which will take one month to be completed.

And I want to know if the ICT Infrastructure Management and Application Management corresponding to Infrastructures and Applications separately? Could I compare them from this aspect?

Thank you again!
Kathy ^_^

[Guerino1]

Hi Kathy,

[victory]

Could somebody throw some light on "relationships between Services, applications and infrastructures" and how it is handled in CMDB?

Thanks in advance,
VICTORY