Specific Question of what Management Level

[tmack]

(My first post, glad to find this forum)

See if anyone can shed some light on this for me, in our organization we have a standard image that is applied to our pc's when there is a problem that rather than sort its true solution we re-image the pc. Would re-imaging the pc in this scenario be problem or release management? Would love the feedback thanks.

[Guerino1]

Hello Tmack,

It's not really much of either.

If someone calls experiencing an issue with the PC, they have registered an Incident (Incident Management).

If as part of your Incident handling and escalation procedures, your policies take you to a decision to reimage the box, you're still in Incident Management. However, you will tap into some other disciplines by rebuilding the machine. Here are some examples:

• Incident Management: As stated above, as someone reports an issue, it's an incident that kicks off the entire process.
  
• Asset Management: You have at least two assets you will be dealing with, the box you're rebuilding and the image.
  
• Configuration Management: When you rebuild the box, you will be "reconfiguring" the box with a specific version of the image. You will want to record the configuration of the box: What image is one it, what person is using it, what facility it's in, what office it's in, etc.
  
• Release Management: The image is a specific version of an internally created product "The Desktop Image" that you will maintain and version, every time you modify and improve the image. You will be deploying this image to the box you're rebuilding. The is about as much of what you will use, with respect to Release Management, at the time of imaging the box. Release Management is really the process used to manage the definition, design, construction/implemenation, packaging, distributing, instantiating, executing, and testing the image to sign off on it, including the final deployment of that image to it's destined targets.
  
• Deployment/Distribution Management: This is not an ITIL discipline but it is a clear and repetitive process that you will use to push or pull the image onto the targeted box.
  
• Build Management: This is not an ITIL discipline but it is a clear and repetitive process that you will use to control the build of the box.
  
• Test/Verification Management: Again, not an ITIL process but definitely a repetitive process you will use to verify the build on the new box, before signing off on it.
  

I hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Frank
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[Edited by Admin to remove link]

[tmack]

Thank you for the feedback, and I see your point. Well put.

One question under Release Management you used the term "instantiating" what did you mean there?

[UKVIKING]

Frank forgot change management which is to make sure that there is a controlled process to make a change in the environment

What my real concern is

why re-image a machine every time there is a problem ?

and

what is the criteria for doing so ?

I just think that is a complete waste for the user and the business - especially if the user loses his personal data.

But what ever works works
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John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter