Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

CMDB Importance, advantages and considerations

In digital businesses, it has become essential to manage and monitor each of the Information Technology (IT) resources, including the hardware, software, system configuration and the relationships between them, in order to ensure the agile and timely delivery of their services that results in the best experience of the organization’s users and, ultimately, in a better response from business partners and customers. In this article we will present the features of Configuration Management Databases (CMDB), their importance and considerations to make the most out of the expected advantages.

What is Configuration Management Database (CMDB)?

The Information Technology (IT) infrastructure has become increasingly complex, in different environments, with more components and greater compliance requirements with regulatory provisions, both local and international. This means that managing it in a traditional (manual) way has become a virtually impossible task, with great possibilities of making mistakes that can impact the operation of the organization. The Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is the place where history data, locations, owners/users, functions, as well as the relationship between each of the IT assets (called CI, Configuration Item) are kept, so it is not just an information repository.

Traditionally, IT asset management has focused on the lifecycle and financial aspects of IT assets. With CMDB, the approach becomes totally different: service-oriented, which each CI provides, as part of a service. IT strategists can use the information in this database to create a comprehensive view of the entire IT infrastructure to understand component configuration and their interdependence on each other throughout the asset lifecycle. For that reason, CMDB’s abundance of information contributes to the effective automation of the tracking, configuration and compliance of each CI, as well as the identification of potential problems among CIs, in order to ensure the efficient delivery of IT services and, consequently, the best response and experience for customers.

Evolution of the CMDB

IT staff have used repositories for IT asset data; for example IT Asset Management, which reflects financial aspects of technology resources and their evolution throughout their life cycle. However, CMDB emerged as part of the practice ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), which requires visibility and the same source of truth from each CI, which also reflects the relationship between technological resources and their users. CMDB has also been the answer to the need for understanding the interdependence between ICs in order to implement automatic failover, which is a process where a computer system automatically switches to a redundant or standby system in the event of a failure or outage.

IT staff can also leverage automation and asset management data to ensure the effectiveness of a Disaster Recovery plan (Disaster Recovery, DR). For instance, CMDB preserves copies of IP addresses and DNS entries to restore infrastructure in the event of incidents or failures. This allows to avoid interruption in IT services, giving operational continuity to the organization.

For these execution and analysis tasks, it is recommended to adopt emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, not only to automate and accelerate recovery processes, but also to predict the impact of configuration changes on service levels.

ITIL and CMDB

ITIL is a sub-concept of IT Service Management (ITSM, IT Service Management), which refers to the activities to design, build, operate and maintain IT services for internal and external customers of the organization, on the basis that IT must be delivered as a service. ITIL is defined as the set of best practices for managing IT services, their support and service levels to ensure adequate quality, improving efficiency and reducing costs, based on practical guides and use cases that companies can adopt in the configuration management of their resources.

Hence, CMDB is a key element for ITIL, as it allows IT teams to get traceability and visibility of relationships between CIs, based on four key aspects:

• IT alignment with the business – implementation of processes whose priority is to align IT services with the needs of the business.
• IT service-based on functions, processes and roles:
• Functions based on specialization but that must work in a coordinated manner to achieve the organization’s objectives.
• Key processes in the management of IT services, which must be structured and defined for specific activities in service provision with specific results, are measurable and are initiated in response to an event and there is a receiver of the result of the processes.
• Roles that are responsibilities, activities and subject to authorizations.
• Measure to manage- Under the principle that you cannot improve what you cannot measure, it is essential to establish metrics to manage and control.
• Definition of the life cycle- Asset register from their justification, design and construction, to their testing, deployment, continuous improvement and discarding.

CMDB Advantages

When CMDB is implemented with best practices, you will obtain the following advantages:

• At the time of merging the information of all the CIs, you will achieve a centralized vision of the entire IT infrastructure, which allows to streamline and automate management processes, in addition to minimizing errors that may impact the level of IT services for the organization.
• The improved and full visibility of the IT infrastructure provides vital information for timely decision making and the ability to react to possible incidents, being able to accelerate necessary resolutions and minimize downtime that can affect the business. IT staff, through more accurate analysis, can also identify potential problems, not only by taking into account IT resources (CI), but also their owners and users.
• Detailed documentation of each CI and its configuration changes allows IT staff to improve communication between IT teams and identify key components in service delivery models to respond to business needs.
• The records and updated visibility of CIs, their history changes and controls allow compliance with audits, standards and risk management, anticipating authorized or unauthorized changes in the IT infrastructure.
• Costs are reduced by requiring fewer IT staff needed to manage the infrastructure, which also reduces the time to implement infrastructure changes or solve incidents. Consequently, IT staff can be assigned to more strategic tasks.

Another very important advantage is that CMDB allows budget planning to be implemented when having full knowledge of each IT asset, such as inventory, configurations, contracts, license, service and maintenance costs.

Challenges when implementing CMDB

Information richness in CMDB is based on the accuracy and constant updating of the data (before and after any change), because the main challenges are:

• Most organizations do not have an adequate plan to feed it constantly. Tools, frequency routines and automation rules are required to avoid relying on manual processes. Failure to do so poses risks of obsolescence or biased reporting.
• Maintaining a CMDB requires the right human talent with the necessary skills to analyze information and anticipate conflicts. Not having staff prepared to capitalize on knowledge can lead to misinterpretation or overlooking potential errors in data quality.
• Data must be useful, objective and focused to support internal processes such as change management. The information must include the data of the users or owners of each IC and the updating mechanisms that reflect history data. In addition, CI data should be reviewed (without duplication or omission) and supplemented with data from other resources to be used in all necessary functions.

Adequate support for federated data is also required, in the sense that not all data should reside solely in CMDB, as there is a misconception that all information should be migrated to this same source of truth. It is recommended to federate data into other tools or solutions that are more suitable for specific use cases such as SAM (Software Asset Management, Software Asset Management) to manage the purchase or implementation of Software or ITFM (IT Financial Management) to analyze IT costs.

CMDB vs. Asset Management (ITAM, IT Asset Management)

Apparently, CMDB and ITAM seem to refer to the same thing; however, there are substantial differences: ITAM describes the life cycle costs of the technology asset (including date and price purchase details, serial numbers, licensing, among others) and seeks to maximize value for the business, focusing on finance. CMDB also emerges as a natural evolution of ITAM, which stores data on the IT environment and the relationship between components and services, with a focus that goes beyond finance. Components are configured and used for delivering a certain IT service. Given the complexity of IT environments, it is not only important to know what you have but how CIs are integrated and related to each other.

To understand this, let’s look at these use cases:

Additionally, CMDB allows to reduce the average resolution time (MTTR, Mean-Time-To-Resolution), improve decisions based on a context and detailed knowledge of CIs. Automation allows IT staff to focus on more strategic tasks and plan capacity and budget based on resource usage.

Advantages of Software Configuration Management

One of the most important aspects in these times of digital business is the Time to Market (time to launch or market a product). To develop software, configuration management assumes a relevant role in version control and continuous integration and distribution infrastructure (CI/CD – Continuos Integration/Continuos Distribution). Development staff can build robust and stable systems using tools that automatically manage and monitor configuration data updates.

To understand this, during the software development process, configuration values can be modified, added or deleted, so it is important to have version control in the configuration and to have the ability to revert the configuration to a last stable state to avoid unexpected results. Staff may also review the audit trail for modifications. To sum up, the advantages of Software Configuration Management are:

• Control of changes in the developed products, preserving their integrity.
• Development method support elements.
• Stable and controlled working environment.
• Support for building robust and stable systems, with automated tools that manage and monitor configuration data updates.

CMDB Sellers and Tools

Today there are a variety of IT Service Management tools that can be integrated with CMDB, for efficient operation. Among the most popular CMDB tools, all customizable, we may mention:

• ServiceNow CMDB.
• BMC Helix CMDB.
• Pandora ITSM

Additionally, there are open source IT management tools, such as OTRS and GLPI, which are free and can also be customized according to the organization.

It is worth mentioning that the data integration tools in CMDB allow to streamline data transfer between different components (sources and destinations) in a single model (federated data), together with the administration of access controls and the mapping of IT services, which streamline staff work to carry out efficient IT resource management as a service to meet business needs.

Conclusion

The digital economy requires the alignment of information technologies with business models, providing high levels of service that ensure efficient operation and delivery of value to users, business partners and, most importantly, customers. CMDB addresses this need by managing IT resources with a comprehensive and more holistic view by looking at each component, its relationship and interdependence in order to deliver technology services efficiently and more automated. Of course, to obtain their benefits, organizations must define a constant updating plan with useful and objective data, as well as having the human talent to carry it out and make a correct interpretation of the information in CMDB. It is also recommended to rely on a technology partner that provides the necessary skills for its analysis and execution.