Pre-Con Ed: Make Better Sense out of the World of CMDB and Change Management

Pre-Con Ed: Make Better Sense out of the World of CMDB and Change ManagementJohn WestonSr. Principal Consultant, Service Management — CA Technologies

AMX29E

AGILE MANAGEMENT

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Agenda

INTRODUCTION

CMDB DEPLOYMENT GUIDELINES

ADVANCED CMDB FUNCTIONS

CHANGE AND CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

1

2

3

4


CMDB Deployment Guidelines


Configuration Management

A service is any system, process, access or other capability that IT

provides its customers according to established expectations of

availability and quality.

Configuration Items (CIs) are entities—usually subject to Change

Management—that are vital to the delivery of a defined service, including– physical servers– VMs– applications

Configuration Management is the process responsible for discovering and

maintaining baseline definitions of services, CIs, and CI relationships.

Definitions


Configuration Management

Establish CI inventory

Create and manage CI and Service relationships and dependencies

Manage CI and Service configuration baselines

Support Root Cause Analysis and Change Impact Analysis

Provide change detection and configuration drift analysis

Drive Continuous Service Improvement for CI and Service

configurations through tolerance mapping

Functions and Benefits


General Guidelines for the CMDB

Not every asset is a CI and not every CI is an asset. Here is a good guideline for what constitutes a CI: is it subject to your Change Management policies?

Assets can be entered into the Management Database (MDB) and give benefits to Incident, Problem, and Change Management.

Do not feel like you must discover everything in order to have a useful CMDB.

– You don’t necessarily need all possible attributes for a given CI

– You don’t need to model all CIs and Services in your infrastructure

Keep change discovery and configuration remediation in the Management Data Repositories (MDRs).

Take a look at CA Configuration Automation. You probably have an entitlement to it through CA Service Desk Manager.


How Your Customers View IT

Service

End

Users

Identity Manager

Firewall

Applications

Switch

Load Balancer Portal

SAP

PSFT

Siebel

Web Services

3rd Party applications

Web Servers

Databases

Router

Mainframe

DatabaseThe end user doesn’t care about any of this


Defining Services

Services are often made up of many layers

Connecting layers is what makes Services useful but complicated

We need to find these connections to navigate through the layers


Service Hierarchies

Service

Layer

Service

Subset

Layer

System

Layer

Logical

Host

Layer

Physical

Host

Layer

Service

Sub-Service

Logical

Partition

Computer

Hardware

Storage

Hardware

Storage

LUN

Network

Zone

Firewall

Hardware

Network

Hardware

System


Service

Layer

Service

Subset

Layer

System

Layer

Logical

Host

Layer

Physical

Host

Layer

Peer-to-Peer Relationships

Storage

Hardware

Network

Hardware

Storage

LUN

Network

Zone

Firewall

Hardware

Service

Sub-Service

Computer

Hardware

System

Logical

Partition

Peer-to-Peer relationships should be considered carefully

because the more “sideways” steps you take the more

unclear it is if a potential dependency exists.

Dependency? Dependency? Dependency? Dependency?


Service Structure Guidelines

Select the Appropriate Structure

Service Mgt = Hierarchy

System Mgt =

Technology-to-Technology

Cost Mgt =

Technology-to-Cost/Contract

Add / Remove hierarchy

layers as required

+

Technology layers can be

skipped if inappropriate

Start Simple….

Then build complexity…

Services, Systems & Computers

Adding Storage, Networks, etc..


CI Relationship Guidelines

Start with the out-of-the-box CI relationships

Define Provider-Dependent relationships between two Service layers and between CI Families in each Layer

Modify the CMDB Visualizer relationship formatting– Assign a different color to each Relationship Type

– Keep Black the peer-to-peer Relationship Types within a layer

– Keep in mind that peer-to-peer relationships will not show up in the Visualizer when you use the Impact Analysis and Root Cause Analysis filters


Advanced CMDB Functions


Transaction Work Area


Transaction Work Area (TWA)

The TWA is a staging area for storing, reviewing, and modifying CI and CI relationship transactions before importing them into the CMDB proper.

Primary uses– Avoid creating multiple records for what is actually one CI

– Avoid creating one record for what are actually multiple CIs

– Transform CI data to conform with CMDB policies, for example where multiple MDRs have different naming conventions


The TWA Process

Load CI and CI relationship data into the TWA. Note that reconciliation is not attempted at this point. Sources:– The web interface

– GRLoader utility with the -lttwa (load into initial state) or -lttwar (load into ready state) options

– Native SQL queries

Modify the data as needed, using the Service Desk web interface or native SQL queries.

From Discovery Source to the TWA


The TWA Process

Load data from the TWA into the CMDB using the GRLoader utility with the -lftwa (load transactions from TWA) or -lftwai (load from TWA and inactivate successful transactions) options

From the TWA to the CMDB


Configuration Item Reconciliation


Configuration Item (CI) Reconciliation

Purpose: assign imported CI attributes to existing CIs where appropriate, and avoid creating duplicates. Name = server1

Mac address = 11:11:11:11:11

Name = server1

Mac address = 22:22:22:22:22

Name = server1

Questions about these three imported CIs:How many servers should we now have in the CMDB?How do we determine the “surviving” CI or CIs?What happens to eliminated duplicates?


Reconciliation Priorities

ID (ca_owned_resource uuid)

Federated Data– Federated Asset ID

– MDR Name

– MDR Class

Reconciliation attributes– Name

– Serial Number

– Asset Number

– System Name

– DNS Name

– MAC Address


Reconciliation Rules

NameSerial

NumberAsset

NumberSystem Name DNS Name

MAC Address Result

Unique Null Null Null Null Null CI created

Null Unique Null Null Null Null CI created

Null Null Unique Null Null Null CI created

Null Null Null Unique Null Null CI created

Null Null Null Null Unique Null CI created

Null Null Null Null Null Unique CI created

Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate Unique Duplicate Duplicate CI created

Unique Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate Recognized as duplicate CI

Null Null Null Null Unique Unique CI created

Null Null Null Null Duplicate Unique Recognized as duplicate CI

Null Null Null Null Unique Duplicate Recognized as duplicate CI

Duplicate Duplicate Unique Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate CI created

Duplicate Unique Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate CI created

Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate Unique Recognized as duplicate CI

Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate Unique Duplicate Recognized as duplicate CI

Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate Duplicate Unique Unique Recognized as duplicate CI


Ambiguous Configuration Items


Ambiguous CIs

An ambiguous CI is one that may be a duplicate.

A CI’s ambiguity index measures its potential for being a duplicate. It is a count of all of the other CI attributes that match any of its reconciliation attributes.– It’s a simple sum of the counts of “CIs with matching name,” “CIs with matching serial

number,” etc.

– Example: Ambiguity Index 2 means that there are two matching attributes in the CMDB, but they might be from the same CI.

Calculate the ambiguity index by running the cmdb_update_ambiguitycommand.– Example: cmdb_update_ambiguity - m all - d MSSQL - u ServiceDesk - p

sdmpassword -s sdmserver1 –level info


Dealing with Ambiguous CIs

Identify them– Scoreboard query

– Administration tab

– Reconciliation tab on a particular CI record

Resolve them– Do nothing or modify the offending CI attributes

– Mark as not ambiguous: removes the CI from lists of ambiguous CIs

– Inactivate the ambiguous CI: removes the CI from normal CI lists

– Supersede: a good option if one or more MDRs will continue to send updates of the CI in question


Superseded Configuration Items


Superseded CIs

As we saw previously, superseded CIs are sometimes created when resolving ambiguous CIs

Incoming updates to a superseded CI are redirected to the superseding CI


Should You Supersede This CI?

For one-off updates it is better to fix input data than to supersede a CI. Superseding generally will be used where you have little control over incoming transactions.

Superseded CIs are flagged as inactive and by default cannot be updated via the web UI.

Since a superseded CI will not be updated its attributes and other data are allowed to atrophy.

If you supersede a superseding CI then all updates will be redirected to the higher superseding CI, as expected.

Some Considerations


GRLoader


Examples of GRLoader Commands

cmdb_update_ambiguity -m all -d MSSQL -u username -p

password -s server -level info — Runs an ambiguity check

grloader -u username -p password -s

http://localhost:8080 -i spreadsheet.xlsx –lttwa —Loads from an Excel spreadsheet into the TWA


http://localhost:8080 -i spreadsheet.xlsx –a —Allows updates from a spreadsheet directly to the CMDB


http://localhost:8080 -sc Windows —Lists attributes of the specified class (in this case the Windows class).


GRLoader Considerations

A number of CI attributes are validated against values from tables rather than being free text entry fields. The import must have valid values for these fields:

– audit_userid

– bm_rep

– bm_status

– class

– company_bought_for_uuid

– contact_1

– contact_2

– contact_3

– delete_flag

– department

– expense_code

– family

– location

– manufacturer

– model

– operating_system

– org_bought_for_uuid

– priority

– repair_org

– resource_contact

– resource_owner_uuid

– service_org

– service_type

– status

– supplier

– vendor_repair

– vendor_restore


Change and Configuration Management


Combining the Two Disciplines


Change Management

The process of managing updates to IT infrastructure

Provides a control structure to authorize changes

Defines clear roles and responsibilities to implement changes

Optimized Change Management results in: – Fewer incidents and problems

– Swifter resolution of problems when they do occur

– Efficient fulfillment of strategic improvement requests


Where Does the CMDB Come In?

Track configuration changes against baselines and/or gold standards

Detect and correct configuration drift before it impacts availability or performance of applications or services

Ensure managed servers are updated to the latest configuration specifications

Detection of Configuration

Error

Service Incident Opened

System Isolation /

Quarantine

Analysis /Known Error

Change Request Opened

Change Request

Approved

Change Deployed

Compliance Verified


Configuration Audit and Control Facility


Configuration Audit and Control Facility (CACF)

The CACF bridges Change Management and Configuration Management. It can also leverage discovery solutions.

Goals of the CACF– Allow for identification of CI attributes that will be updated as part of a

Change Order.

– Verify successful implementation of the attribute updates.

– Ultimately, ensure that the CMDB’s accuracy is maintained.


CACF Roles and Responsibilities

CMDB Administrator– Defines managed CI attributes.

– Defines the policies for updating managed attributes.

What to do with “rogue” updates (i.e., those not associated with a Change Order)

Which MDRs are authorized to update which attributes

– Defines which Change statuses reflect editable Changes and which statuses represent verification states.

Change Analyst– Specifies the attributes that will be updated in a particular Change.

– For each attribute, indicates whether the update will be verified and in which way.


How Change Verification Works

Change Order must be in a Verification in Progress state

An update to the relevant CI is loaded via the web interface, GRLoader, or web services API.

Based on the CACF verification policy for this update one or more of the following actions will be taken:– The update is accepted, and the CI is updated

– The update is deferred to the TWA so that a user can assess it

– An Incident is created

– The update is rejected

The CA Service Management wiki has great recommendations on setting up CACF and especially Change verification.


Change Verification Policies

Allow Update Only if Matches Change Specification: depending on the incoming update CACF will either verify the update and close the Change Order or fail the verification.

Set After Change Verified: closing the Change Order automatically updates the CI attribute to the planned value.

Accept the Planned Value: analyst manually confirms the accuracy of the planned value and accepts it, which updates the CI.

Some Examples


Results

While Configuration Management touches on many aspects of IT in one way or another, its link to and dependence on Change Management is particularly important. In today’s session we have learned about some of the CA Service Desk Manager CMDB capabilities. We have also discussed the sorts of pitfalls and opportunities to watch for when preparing to deploy Configuration Management. You can see benefits from your initial forays into Configuration Management, but the discipline also rewards an iterative approach of continual improvement.

SummaryA Few Words to Review


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Questions?


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