use of CMDB

[RajChakraborty]

Hi Guys,
I am looking for a network management database.
I
1. need to store all the information in a database.
2. need to search the data and complex query will be required to execute.
Joining of tables are also expected.


(data will be of various level.As for telecom network, it will be Node, Shelf, Slot, card, Port etc and data volume will be good enough.)

Will it be a good option to use any CMDB(eg UCMDB) for this requirement?

What are the pros and cons of using CMDB ?

Any help will be appreciable.

Thanks,
Raj

[UKVIKING]

Raj

A database would be useful to manage the Network assets

However, this is not a product site as there are many products that would create a NetCMDB (for lack of a better term)

You should use google to find the products

In addition, you could always start with simple tracking using a spreadsheet and then growing your own database using a MS Office tools - Excel and Access - whilst you search for tool to do so

In addition, you need to consider what processes, procedures etc are going to be used to identify, classification and validat the information in the NetCMDB. This is called Configuration Management

NOTE: Have you had any exposure to ITIL ?
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

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

[Diarmid]

[RajChakraborty]

Thanks for your reply.

Hi Diarmid,
no such intention.
I should have address as hi All.
Sorry.
My bad.


Hi UKVIKING,
No, I dont have any certification on ITIL.

We will have to maintain a database for Inventory management and also need to integrate that database with some network monitoring tool.

[We used to use Cramer (Amdocs) for such scenario.
but it seems that we can avail some CMDB in much less cost,
I found some topics here on CMDB, so posted for help.]

What I need to know, will it be feasible to maintain a CMDB for Asset management.
[yeah, CMDBs got some features which ll be beneficial for us.]

Suppose, I need to integrate with external system(through Web Services), does it support the functionality like normal database?

[UKVIKING]

RajChakraborty

A couple of points.

This site is the ITIL Community Forum. This site is dedicated to ITIL discussions

There is a vast difference from Advice (free) and consluting (cost).

Now to reply to your posts

Monitoring Tools

You need to talk to NMS tools Vendors or google for them and do research. There are some non expensive ones and some expensive ones.
This site is unable to answer NMS tool product information as the members may not have been exposed to more than a few tools whereas you need to look at a lot of tools.

Asset / Inventory Management

As I stated earlier, Excel and MS Access are good stating points.

CMDB

A CMDB is a lot more than an asset register. The CMDB track and manages the relationship between CI (configuration items) and the lifecycle of such. This requires a level of complexity. In addition, a CMDB is absolutely worthless without the Configuration Management process that ensures that the data is maintained.

ITIL is all about IT Service Management and how to do it well, effective and efficient (best practice). Configuration management is part of that.

Integration

Any database, tool, etc can be integrated to any other - for a price. Usually it requires a specialist - application or database - who makes some sort of tool

Basically... you need to seek else where, these are not the droids you are looking for
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

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

[RajChakraborty]

Hi UKVIKING,
Thanks for your advice or as u said FREE CONSULTATION.
Google is accessible to everyone and if that can solve everything then there's no point of looking for a discussion forum.
but thanks a lot anyway.

Hi all,

I am looking for some help like the posts in the following link.

http://www.itilcommunity.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2255&view=next

If someone has to maintain a Network inventory database which will be integrated later,with some other external system to fetch the data,
what kind of database would be the best option?
[data volume will be good enough and we need to maintain CI relationship also.]

[we have used Cramer before and now we are using UCMDB for Inventory management.
but in UCMDB, we are facing some problem like, we need to request many times to get the proper output from database side.As, I came to know that UCMDB cant fire a complex query.
which will be impractical as it is a time consuming process.
in previous case, like in Cramer it was able to fire some complex query and provides the output in a single response.]

So, in future I need to avoid such ambiguity.
Any help on this matter???

[rickstevens]

Hi

Do you know what the back end database is for UCMDB? SQL, Oracle etc?? Is there any possibility of setting up an ODBC connection to MS Access and running your complex queries through there?

[RajChakraborty]

Hi rickstevens,
Sorry for the late reply.

We tried many alternatives like you suggested but were unable to make any progress.

We can make the connectivity and solve the purpose using step by step CI relationship, but that will take a longer time to get the expected response.


CI relaitonship in UCMDB serves the purpose of storing and managing data but in an integration scenario, cant find any feasible option to fetch the data where complex query is supposed to be used.

now, imagine there are many relationship hierarchy like A->B->C->D->E.
We need data from E as well as the one related to it and lies in A.

now, the suggested approach is to use the CI relationship ID which we get in response with data in E to fetch the related data in D and so on to fetch data from A.
Now this will obviously impact badly on the system performance(the one integrated with UCMDB).

Thanks in advance