Cmdb tool

Once data from the various sources is loaded in the CMDB or updated as things change , the information can then be accessed in a unified and consistent way by tools and processes that need to consume it. It is rare for people to access configuration data directly from the CMDB because of the volume of data present and the format that it is stored in.

It is hard to interpret a lot of data in rows and columns. These tools access the data in the CMDB, sort it, filter it, and present information to users in a form that better aligns to the operational or business problem they are trying to solve. The key benefits of using CMDBs include:. Having a complete set of data about your IT environment in a centralized place so you can easily access it. Understanding the composition of critical assets and the components that they depend on.

Understanding what different assets are used for and which business processes and users depend on them. Providing information to support decision making about the IT environment, operational costs and technology decisions. Enabling risk management by providing an inventory of what technology assets you have that may have vulnerabilities.

CMDBs are not without their drawbacks though. Creating, maintaining and effectively using a large set of configuration data can be costly both in technical resources and the human attention needed to ensure quality and value. Some of the key drawbacks of using CMDBs include:. Frequently CMDBs contain a copy of data from other source systems. As companies grow and evolve, the data set can become quite large. To use CMDB data effectively, you will likely need tools like ITSM apps and reporting systems , data analysis skills to organize and refine the data and processes to consume the configuration data as a part of operations.

There is often a lot of confusion about the difference between configuration management and asset management in ITSM. Configuration management and the CMDB are focused on the data used to manage your assets during the period that they are live and present within your IT environment. Asset management on the other hand is the set of processes that are used to manage the end-to-end lifecycle of assets. Asset management processes often include things like procurement and purchasing, software license management, asset valuation and technology refresh processes.

In incident management, a CMDB can help identify the changes that led to an incident and get to faster resolution. Incident records can be associated with their relevant CIs, helping teams track incidents over time alongside the assets they impact. In problem management, a CMDB can help with root cause analysis, getting teams to the heart of a problem quicker.

It can also support proactive problem management by helping teams identify assets that need upgrading to reduce service costs and unplanned downtime. At the end of the day, a CMDB should reduce complexity, prevent errors, increase security, and help ITSM practices like change and incident management run smoothly. And such a high failure rate has left the technology with a rather problematic reputation. The good news is that the reasons for failure are preventable and tend to fall into six predictable categories:.

As with anything in an organization, culture and team commitment is one of the most important factors in whether new technology and processes are successful. That holds true for CMDB projects. As with any data repository, a CMDB should contain focused, useful data that supports internal processes like change management. Make sure your CMDB has a clearly defined value objective, owner, and a way to update data to reflect all changes. For example, it often makes more sense to keep financial data in an IT financial management ITFM tool and software license information with a software asset management SAM tool.

The data can be imported and mirrored in your CMDB, even without that being its primary storage space. Many organizations struggle to develop and maintain an accurate CMDB. The most common issues are discovery tools running too infrequently, an absence of automation rules, or a reliance on manual inputs. The typical answer to these challenges is event-driven discovery that augments traditional, bottom-up discovery.

For those unfamiliar with those terms, bottom-up discovery is when assets are mapped starting with infrastructure and branching out into customer-facing CIs. Event-driven discovery is when something happens—an event within a system, a problem, etc.

Then, based on that event, the system maps the related CIs and their connections. Now, not every CI is discoverable. For example, your team may want to map monitors in your CMDB. The key to accuracy is harnessing the power of both bottom-up discovery and event-driven discovery to get the clearest picture of your assets and their connections.

There is a perception in some organizations that CMDBs are for modeling legacy infrastructure and software, rather than the new stack of cloud and software-defined infrastructure and the modern workflows hosted on them. Choosing the right tool is paramount if you want to avoid the unhappy failure statistics above.

Some CMDB tools amount to little more than asset repositories—data structures fixed on legacy physical infrastructure and discovery tools that react slowly to any changes.

To succeed with a CMDB, you need one that accounts for new types of assets and is capable of quick change. In general, it makes sense to start high-level and get the services right and then only go wider or deeper where needed to meet your organizational goals.

Technical entities include business services, technical services, applications, software, databases, containers, virtual machines, operating systems, hardware, networks, ports, etc. Non-technical entities can also be modeled in your CMDB if you need to represent them as either dependent or impacted by other assets in your IT service mapping.

Non-technical entities may include users, customers, organizations, locations, service agreements, documents, etc.

Lastly, cloud services should be taken into consideration in the design of a CMDB model. This lets users view individual assets, as well as their relationships to each other, within the context of the larger IT network.

In this context, a CMDB is a crucial resource in impact analysis for IT change management, problem management, and even day-to-day incident management. CMDB tools are helpful in these situations because they can provide relevant data on an organization-wide level. This can result in practical benefits for your organization.

This means that the source of the problem is not always clear. You can use a CMDB to track down where these inconsistencies have taken place and address the problem directly. By sidestepping the process of differentiating the symptoms from the cause, you save time and get straight to the solution.

There are also benefits on the front end. For example, workers lose an estimated 46 minutes per day dealing with IT issues. The quicker your teams can diagnose the problem, the sooner they can start working on solutions. Access to a CMDB can expedite this by streamlining the process.

The impact that a CMDB can have on facilitating the efficient use of centralized data has been recognized as a vital part of IT management.