Managing and maintaining a complex IT infrastructure throughout an organization is no small feat. If this is your case, implementing a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to support your IT Asset Management strategy will make a big difference.
In a nutshell, with a CMDB, you’ll be able to detect, visualize, and manage your organization’s assets in an effective and straightforward way. And that’s not all—you’ll also be able to see how they are interconnected and the impact they have on the smooth operation of your organization.
In the following article, we will look into how the CMDB functions and the full extent of its capabilities. Don’t miss the unique insights from CMDB expert Allen Dixon and the results achieved by Smartmatic when they decided to implement InvGate Asset Management – our own IT Asset Management (ITAM) tool.
Join us as we uncover its power and discover how it can revolutionize your organization's IT operations!
What is Configuration Management Database (CMDB)?
A Configuration Management Database is a centralized repository that stores information about the Configuration Items (CIs) within an organization's IT infrastructure. To do so, it acts as a comprehensive visual map of all hardware, software, network components, applications, and their interdependencies.
By providing a holistic view of the IT environment, the CMDB enables organizations to better understand the impact of changes, troubleshoot incidents, perform accurate Asset Management, and plan for future enhancements.
It also serves as a great component of IT Service Management (ITSM) as it helps manage and maintain the stability, performance, and availability of IT services. Thanks to it, agents can track and solve incidents in the organization’s IT infrastructure.
What’s the relationship between the CMDB and ITSM?
There is a connection between IT Service Management and CMDB, that’s for sure. But it’s not entirely linear. Let me explain. In a nutshell, ITSM consists of a series of standardized processes and practices to implement and improve IT services. This includes various practices you already might be familiar with, like Incident Management, Problem Management, and even IT Asset Management (ITAM).
CMDB, on the other hand, is a concept tied to ITAM. We could think of it as a Russian nesting doll, where the first doll is ITSM, the second is ITAM, and a distant and smaller (but very important) inner doll is CMDB. The latter is an integrated concept within the other two and definitely contributes to achieving the objectives that both practices aim for from an organizational and business perspective.
What’s the link between the CMDB and Asset Management?
CMDB, Asset Management, and IT Asset Management all work together to give an organization a full view of the resources, each serving in a somewhat different function. You already know that a CMDB is a kind of blueprint on how systems and components are interconnected.
Such a map enables IT teams to understand how everything fits together and to handle quicker changes and incident resolution. While CMDB itself does not track financials, it offers great context in relation to what each asset does and how it impacts operations.
Asset Management and ITAM, on the other hand, focus on the lifecycle and cost of resources: everything from tracking IT assets to office equipment, keeping tabs on cost and compliance organization-wide. ITAM gets deeper into specifics with regard to IT, addressing items to include software licenses and hardware lifecycles.
Combined with a CMDB, ITAM develops knowledge of the role and dependency of each asset-also known as underpinning-smarter, more cost-effective decisions. In short, together they make sure an organization's assets are well-managed, cost-effective, and operationally aligned.
How to Build a CMDB: The ABC of a Successful CMDB Implementation
Configuration Management Database and ITIL
There are no big mysteries in the connection between these two concepts. In fact, the link between them is quite logical. First, ITIL provides its own definition of what a CMDB is. According to ITIL 4, the latest version of the framework, a CMDB is a database used to store configuration records throughout their lifecycle.
This database should serve as a single source of truth for all configuration information related to an organization’s IT services and infrastructure. It should contain accurate and up-to-date data, including details about CIs, relationships, dependencies, and attributes—all essential to understanding what a CMDB is.
Second, it’s important to remember that ITIL is one of the most widely used ITSM frameworks globally. For this reason, many companies require that their processes align with ITIL’s guidelines. ITIL not only provides definitions but also procedures, which often leads to the need to establish a CMDB that adheres to ITIL standards. Makes sense, right?
What is a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) used for?
A CMDB can be used for many purposes, depending on your team’s needs and the objectives of the company you work for. Undoubtedly, one of the greatest uses of a CMDB is the ability to provide visibility into a company’s assets and how they relate to one another. Let’s look at a practical example.
Smartmatic, a global leader in the administration and modernization of electoral processes, needed a secure, transparent, ITIL-aligned tool. Among other things, they needed to organize the vast amount of information about their assets.
They implemented InvGate Service Management and InvGate Asset Management in 2020, and the CMDB feature allowed them to centralize their entire asset inventory with all its information in one place. In fact, they created 14 different ITIL-aligned CMDB diagrams, resulting in a clear, easy-to-read map of all their assets.
Visibility is not the only capability that CMDBs bring to the table. Let’s explore all of them.
Configuration Management Database (CMDB) capabilities
- Discovery. Needless to say, one of the primary capabilities a CMDB should have is the ability to identify and discover assets and keep them up to date. Discovery mechanisms, including agent-based or agentless approaches, help automatically identify and gather information about CIs in the IT infrastructure. Creating and maintaining this IT infrastructure map should be a straightforward process, and with the right tools, it is.
- Visualization. We covered this point in previous paragraphs, and it is undoubtedly a non-negotiable capability. A well-constructed CMDB will allow you to have a complete view of your assets across your systems and applications and understand how they interconnect.
The visual map will help you identify systems or network connections that require failover, duplication, or redundancy. Additionally, it will enable you to view all activity across devices in a single, comprehensive map. If the service experiences degraded performance or an outage, you can track all changes across assets throughout the supply chain. - Integration. Additionally, a CMDB should be able to integrate with other tools. This enables faster incident resolution times, identification of problems, and root cause analysis to enhance IT Service Management.
- Autonomy and workflow automation. A valuable characteristic of a CMDB is the ability to add notifications and other automation features. This autonomy allows users to customize the CMDB according to their specific needs and priorities. Notifications and alerts can be configured to inform stakeholders when changes or events occur that impact the items they care about the most.
- Knowledge and Context Management. A robust CMDB should centralize not only information about your assets and their relationships but also essential knowledge and documentation related to your services. This includes subject matter expert (SME) details, procedural guidelines, unique configurations, and any "secrets" required for effective Service Management.
By integrating this contextual information, the CMDB becomes a single source of truth that supports informed decision-making and streamlines operations. It's also crucial to highlight the often invisible technology that supports a service behind the scenes. For instance, it’s common to overlook critical elements like which switch must NOT be restarted to preserve essential service operations. Documenting and making this information accessible within the CMDB ensures that teams can make informed decisions quickly, preventing disruptions and safeguarding service continuity.
By integrating this contextual information, the CMDB becomes a single source of truth that supports informed decision-making and streamlines operations. - Analytics. Finally, a CMDB should have the ability to provide metrics, statistics and reports that help identify issues and support faster resolution.
How does a CMDB work?
A CMDB operates by consuming change information to update CIs: it both captures new CIs and keeps the incorporated ones up to date throughout their lifecycle.
When changes occur in the IT environment, such as the addition of new hardware or software updates, the CMDB consumes change information to update the relevant Configuration Items. This process ensures that the most current and accurate information about the organization's IT assets is reflected.
By identifying the necessary configuration items and their relationships, it ensures that the design aligns with the organization's infrastructure. Overall, the CMDB becomes a trusted source of information that teams can rely on.
Configuration Management Database components
The CMDB incorporates various components that work together to provide a comprehensive understanding of the IT infrastructure. Let's explore them:
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Record of CIs -This component focuses on capturing the details of each CI within the IT environment. It includes information such as hardware specifications, software versions, network configurations, and other relevant attributes specific to each CI.
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Relationships between CIs - CIs within an IT infrastructure are not isolated entities but interact with and depend on one another. The CMDB captures these relationships, establishing a comprehensive view of how CIs are related, dependent, and supportive of each other.
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Graphical representation - It offers a visual map of the relationships between CIs, their dependencies, and how they combine to support various services. This serves as a visual aid when looking at the complete IT ecosystem and helps identify potential areas of improvement or risks.
The Ultimate Guide to Configuration Management
3 benefits of having a CMDB
Let's explore why companies need a CMDB and the advantages it provides:
- Better asset understanding. The visualization of your networks, cloud, and data center environments allows you to understand the intricate connections between components. This makes it easier to identify potential risks through Risk Management, troubleshoot issues, and plan for changes effectively.
- Support change and Incident Management. Thanks to its visual map nature, the CMDB allows IT teams to analyze the impact of changes or incidents on the overall service delivery chain. They can identify potential areas of disruption, plan for effective service continuity, and minimize the impact of incidents on business operations.
- Enhance compliance. The CMDB helps identify any unauthorized or unrecorded changes, as you can check the change log in the infrastructure, enabling IT teams to investigate and rectify them promptly. This capability also ensures that organizations can maintain accurate audit trails, demonstrate compliance, and avoid potential security and regulatory risks.
What is a Configuration Item (CI)?
3 CMDB challenges
While a CMDB brings significant benefits to organizations, there are several challenges associated with its implementation and usage:
- Letting go of completeness. A CMDB that encompasses every single configuration item and its relationships is often unrealistic and impractical. Focusing on capturing critical and valuable information becomes essential for effectively managing a CMDB.
- Defining the scope. In line with the previous challenge, it is important to strike a balance between including relevant configuration items and avoiding unnecessary efforts to track insignificant components. Clearly defining the scope ensures that the CMDB provides meaningful insights without becoming burdensome to maintain.
- Maintaining data quality. If inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated information is entered into the CMDB, it will undermine the usefulness and reliability of the data it provides. To overcome this challenge, InvGate Service Management counts with automation and monitoring tools to establish regular data validation and verification.
3 easy steps for a solid CMDB implementation
There are many ways to implement a CMDB, and they all depend on the complexity of the IT infrastructure and the tool being used (doing the job in Excel is not the same as using a more modern tool).
We propose a three-step guide for implementing a solid CMDB using InvGate Asset Management. You can always refer to the tutorial, but here’s a summary:
- Create a unified inventory: Basically, draw up a very detailed inventory on all the assets in your IT environment. InvGate Asset Management allows adding assets in several ways: manually, with an agent, importing from a CSV or XLS file, via cloud services or APIs, and discovery. This unified inventory forms the backbone of your CMDB, in which everything should be included and updated.
- Create business applications: Once the inventory is set up, you must create Business Applications in the system manually. You will select the category "Business Applications" and fill in the details like Name, Owner, Location, Tags, etc. A business application is a collection of a certain number of connected assets. It provides an organized way of managing and analyzing these assets.
- CMDB Visualization: Using Business Applications, visualize the relationships of various Configuration Items. Simply click on the “Diagram” tab, then add a new CI to start, adding each related asset by clicking the "+" on each. This graphical view will help you understand their dependencies and interaction within your IT infrastructure and increase your capability to plan and troubleshoot accordingly.
6 things to consider when purchasing CMDB software
There’s no doubt that we’re unbiased on this topic. InvGate Asset Management is an excellent tool for building and maintaining a CMDB, and we’re certainly not trying to hide it.
That said, regardless of the tool you choose, there are some basic considerations that all software should cover. Here’s a list of them:
- Integration with ITSM tools. In addition to integrating with other ITSM tools, the tool you choose should be able to integrate your assets with your cloud services, such as AWS or Microsoft Azure.
- Scalability and performance. It may sound repetitive, but all software should be scalable. This ensures that when your organization grows or your goals expand, the tool grows with you.
- Automation. The tool should include the ability to automate some of its tasks. This reduces the margin for human error and saves time and costs.
- Security and compliance. This is definitely an important aspect to consider. You should choose a platform or software that adheres to security best practices and compliance requirements, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or industry-specific regulations.
- Customization. The ability to infinitely customize the tool is essential, as it allows you to address the unique characteristics of each industry with ease.
- Cost-benefit ratio. This is undoubtedly an important factor. It’s essential to evaluate the tool’s cost against the advantages it brings to your organization and the objectives that prompted the need for one or more CMDBs.
5 CMDB implementation best practices
Configuration Management Database is implemented after much planning. It's always a good starting point to listen to experts, as they offer unique and highly valuable knowledge.
In episode 62 of Ticket Volume, we talked with Allen Dixon, an ITIL-trained professional with over two decades of IT experience across various industries. Here are some of the insights we gathered from the conversation.
1. Start with a single service CMDB or subsection of your infrastructure
This gives you the opportunity to learn, sort through issues, and hone your implementation methods. That ensures greater control over the process and reduces the possibility of overload in your resources.
2. Adopt and utilize
The approach should be able to ensure the participation of active users and IT staff who own their respective CIs. Explain making it as user-friendly and intuitive as possible, along with a clear advantage to the user in updating their CIs. The more useful and easy to work with that CMDB is found by people, the more they'll use and support it.
3. Assign ownership
Ownership of the responsibility for the CMDB ensures that there are appointed owners or teams responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the Business Application and are context-specific in the place to provide the information when needed.
4. Integrate with Change Management processes
Changes applied in the IT infrastructure need to show in the CMDB. It should give snapshots of the state of the CIs before, during, and after a change. Integration gives an objective view of the process of change; it provides correct reporting and analysis.
Using InvGate Asset Management as your CMDB software
There are many IT Asset Management systems and tools, that's for sure. And you really can’t build a CMDB without the right tool. Although the process has its complexities, with some key concepts and procedures in mind it is much easier.
InvGate Asset Management includes a robust CMDB feature through its Business Application entity. Business Applications represent a group of related CIs, allowing you to quickly identify the trends, patterns, and outliers in your IT environment.
The CMDB section and associated CIs provide an overview of all Business Applications created. It also offers a comprehensive chart, where users can view statistics, relationships, requests, activity history, and other vital information.
To make the creation process easier to asset managers, it counts with an intuitive diagram editor, allowing users to visually represent the relationships between CIs within a Business Application.
Additionally, InvGate Asset Management supports relationship criticality levels, distinguishing relationships based on their importance. This feature aids in identifying critical dependencies and prioritizing management efforts.
The other key feature in InvGate Insght’s CMDB is that it provides the history of all changes made in the Business Application. This is extremely useful for performing Change Management, as you can have all the changes documented.
And also comes it is very handy in Problem Management, revising if there were any dark spots that agents might miss when performing the change and are causing a major incident.
What else can InvGate Asset Management do?
InvGate Asset Management is an IT Asset Management solution designed to provide organizations with a comprehensive view of their IT assets and services. The software offers a user-friendly interface that simplifies the process of managing and accessing critical information about IT assets, enabling IT teams to make informed decisions quickly.
One of the key features of InvGate Asset Management is its ability to automate data collection and updates, ensuring that the CMDB remains accurate and up-to-date.
This automation reduces the manual effort required to maintain the database, allowing IT professionals to focus on more strategic tasks. Additionally, InvGate Asset Management integrates with various IT Service Management tools and other systems (you can access the full list here!), facilitating a holistic approach to IT management.
Conclusion
Creating and maintaining one or more CMDBs is essential for effective IT Asset Management. Imagine being able to detect and view all your assets and how they interact and impact critical points in your IT infrastructure with just a few clicks and in seconds. The advantages are countless.
In this article, we explored what a CMDB is, its components, why it's linked to ITSM, ITAM, and ITIL, and how to follow an organized design process for optimal results. We covered the benefits and challenges of implementation and how easy it can be to use software like InvGate Asset Management.
If you found yourself resonating with this, it’s time to take action and give it a try. To start implementing a CMDB with InvGate Asset Management, request a 30-day free trial! Until next time!
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is a CI in CMDB?
A CI in a CMDB refers to a distinct element within an organization's IT infrastructure. They are the building blocks of a CMDB and are recorded with their attributes, relationships, and dependencies to provide a comprehensive view of the IT landscape.
2. Is CMDB the same as asset inventory?
No. Un asset inventory es un listado de activos. Una CMDB te permite identificar activos, pero también observar la forma en la que se vinculan y en base a eso detectar conexiones fundamentales y prioritarias dentro de una organización.
3. What is the difference between CMDB and CMS?
A CMDB is a repository of configuration items, whereas the Configuration Management System, CMS, is a system that provides a way of organizing a number of diverse data sources, including the CMDB into comprehensive information.
4. Who should own the CMDB?
In most organizations, it is supposed to be owned by the IT Service Management ITSM or the IT Operations team, with clearly defined roles to guarantee the data accuracy.
5. Why do CMDB projects fail?
Most of the time, CMDB projects fail owing to a lack of prior planning, poor quality of data input, scarcity of resources, and inability to integrate into other IT systems.
6. What is a healthy CMDB?
A healthy CMDB is one that is updated, accurate, integrated well with the ITSM processes in organizations, and on which decisions can depend with a guarantee of reliability.
7. What makes a good CMDB?
A good CMDB should have completeness; it should be easily updated; it should be well integrated; it should be scalable; above all, it should ensure clarity about relationships and dependencies between assets.
