My first venture into implementing a CMDB was nearly five years for a very large multi-national firm and before the term ITIL was barely even spoken in North America. I was challenged by the Chief Technology Officer to look into Configuration Management and come up with a strategy for addressing it. It did not take long for me to identify my first batch of major obstacles;
- Volume of data
- Quality of data
- Constant Changes
I found that in my particular situation my problem was centered not on creating more data but instead, deciphering the volumes that already existed in the environment and determining what was accurate and at what point in time was it accurate. Accuracy and timeliness of the data in an MDR is vital and a manually populated CMS is wrought with pitfalls. There is some manual data which is unavoidable but it needs to be kept to a minimum and validated far more often than its discovered counterpart.
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In the 5 part series of posts to come, I will use the term CMS versus CMDB when describing what needs to be done. Where I use CMDB, it will typically be when describing previous efforts I have been directly involved in or to maintain a historical context. The fundamental and architectural approach which Glenn O’Donnell and I recommend in our book “The CMDB Imperative” is that of a Configuration Management System (CMS) not a Configuration Management Database (CMDB). So, you may be asking yourself, as someone recently asked me, Why is it that you called your book ‘The CMDB Imperative’ instead of ‘The CMS Imperative’ when you and Glenn are such strong proponents of a CMS?
The best way to answer this question is by quoting our book:
“We must be clear about one important detail regarding the CMDB phenomenon. ITIL practitioners hate the term CMDB. We hate it because it connotes an incorrect perception about how the CMDB should be built and used. Of course, this begs the question of why we chose to write a book about something we hate. We love the concept, we just hate the name. The concept is profound and is central to any IT organization striving for operational discipline. Every IT organization needs a CMDB, and most have probably built several in the past under different names, but there is enormous confusion around the concept and much of this confusion stems from the name itself. We wrote a “CMDB Book” to help clarify this confusion and in future editions, hope to reference CMDB only in a historical context.”
‘The CMDB Imperative: How to realize the dream and avoid the nightmares’ Page 21
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Hey everyone,
First, I’d like to thank all of you for participating in the poll. More than 100 of you provided input as to what topics you felt were most important to you on issue of the CMS ( aka CMDB ).
The poll closed the other day and the results are:
- 17% - Auto Discovery
- 16% - Federation vs. Aggregation
- 14% - Manual vs. Technology
- 11% - Tie
- Implementation Challenges
- Model
- 9% - Tie
- Value Propositions
- Where Do I begin
- 7% - Reconciliation
- 5% - Buy vs. Build
- 1% - Other
Results can also be viewed by clicking this link: CMDB / CMS Blog Series Topics Poll Results(trends)
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