BMC Confidential

Don’t Overlook the Technology

Real lessons learned when designing and implementing a CMDB

John Morton – BMC Software Canada

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BSM Maturity Curve

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Business Service Management

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CMDB Improves Business-IT Alignment

› Now: More accurate, pervasive and business-aware views of how technology supports the business

– Bring more silos of data into BSM view– Bring more business context to more IT specialties

Brings IT processes and technology

management together

Prevents collaboration using common information about how technology supports the business

Process, technology, and data silos BMC: Shared views of technology-business relationships

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CMDBService Delivery

Service Level Management1. Requires all service level agreement

(SLA) components to be entered2. Allows referencing of SLAs3. Provides reference point for underpinning

contracts4. Shows customer ownership5. Serves as a vital component for the

Service Improvement Program

Financial Management1. Shows which CIs are used for each

service provided to customers2. Provides chargeback components 3. Provides important governance

information4. Provides a vital source for inventory/asset

audit5. Serves as an important tool for financial

calculations — e.g., budgets and forecasting

Business Continuity Management1. Provides baselines that include vital

recovery data2. Indicates how change in CI status could

mean changes in continuity requirements such as when a low-priority system becomes higher priority due to a change of system functionality

3. Identifies potential continuity outages4. Provides feedback data to customers

during outages5. Shows status of CIs as they become

active after an outage

Availability Management1. Provides vital business impact data2. Applies Availability Management to all CIs

in CMDB3. Shows related components in an

availability string4. Provides risk-analysis data5. Helps isolate which CIs are the root cause

of availability failures

Capacity Management1. Enables each CI to be a potential

Capacity Management candidate2. Provides resources for capacity modelling3. Shows related CIs in a capacity grouping4. Provides vital risk-analysis data5. Reduces time needed to resolve capacity-

related incidents and problems

CMDB Factor – Service Delivery

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CMDBService Support

Incident Management1. Populates records automatically2. Provides status of configuration items3. Provides urgency data for priorities4. Presents impact data for priorities5. Provides escalation data

Release Management1. Tracks rollout status2. Keeps version details for software3. Verifies tested configurations4. Provides detailed information to ensure

successful release5. Provides data for financial impact of

releases

Service Desk1. Identify missing configuration items2. Populate records automatically when the

Service Desk records incidents3. Provide proactive notifications to users 4. Provide feedback to customers about

CMDB changes5. Assist configuration management with

CMDB audit

Change Management1. Shows CIs that are in the change

management process2. Provides risk-analysis data3. Shows which other components could be

affected by a change4. Enables communication to users related

to a pending change5. Reflects the new status immediately after

a change

Problem Management1. Populates problem records automatically2. Provides status of configuration items3. Offers risk-analysis data for priorities4. Provides ownership data5. Presents data for proactive problem

analysis

CMDB Factor – Service Support

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5 Stages of CMDB Implementation

Stage 1: Assemble the project team and define the project

Stage 2: Define requirements

Stage 3: Finalize plan and select technology

Stage 4: Construct and maintain your CMDB

Stage 5: Communicating ongoing value and driving continuous improvement

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Step-by-Step CMDB Flow

6. Review and identify

Governance requirements

10. Define Service

Catalogue CMDB

requirements

14. Define Configuration

Item attributes

15. Design IT Model Blueprint

16. Select technologies

for your CMDB

20. Select tool to automate

CMDB population

7. Review and select

supporting best practices

21. Populate your CMDB

17. Finalize the scope and plan the expansion

19. Construct your CMDB

8. Identify and address potential problems

9. Identify asset and inventory requirements

11. Define requirements

for other processes

12. Defining Configuration Item level – IT Service Model

22. Create CI Lifecycle

management process

23. Build supporting processes

24. Train the CMDB Team

25. Identify and install metrics

13. Define Configuration

Item relationships

18. Calculate and present ROI

26. Create a continuous

service improvement

program

3. Review and agree CMDB

goals and mission

statement

4. Review, define and

communicate the expected

benefits

5. Build a business case

1. Identify project team

members, define roles and responsibilities

2. Obtain CMDB knowledge

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BMC Atrium CMDBUnifying Decision Making Across IT Processes

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Check out this Ecosystem

BMC Service Impact ManagerBMC Performance ManagerBMC MainviewBMC SW Configuration Mgmt BMC Control-M

BMC Foundation DiscoveryBMC Configuration DiscoveryBMC Topology DiscoveryBMC Identity Discovery

BMC Remedy Asset ManagementBMC Remedy Service DeskBMC Remedy Change ManagementBMC Service Level Management

Tripwire (Verification/Audit)**Voyence (Network CCM)**IDS ScheerOracle DatabasesMicrosoft SMSMicrosoft SQL Databases

** Partner Integration

› Many BMC products are now BMC Atrium Activated– No other vendor has this level of out of the box integration

CMDB

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BMC Atrium CMDB 2.0 –Common Data Model (CDM)

› Extend common data model to include:– Business processes – User identity and roles – Mainframes – Batch processes– Service oriented architectures

› Common Data Model Extensions– Provides enhanced mechanisms that make

it easier to configure/customize the CDM– Ease of data migration

› Extension Packs– Used by specific data provider/consumer to

extend the CDM in a controlled way• Used by BMC and Partner solutions

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BMC Atrium CMDB Common Data Model

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BMC Atrium CMDB 2.0 – Reconciliation Engine

› Workflow Enabled Compare Activity– Manage change verification– Workflow to take specific actions based on

compare results• Notify users• Create incident (unplanned change)

› Reconciliation Sandbox – Supports overlay datasets– Controls how and when reconciled data gets

moved into the production CMDB

› Event driven reconciliation– Initiated reconciliation in ad hoc fashion via API

› Reconciliation Activates – RE activities: copy, delete, purge datasets– COPY, DELETE and PURGE CI’s during RE jobs

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Federation of Data

› What is “Federation”?– Definition: Federation refers to a central repository holding Configuration Items

and Relationships directly, while linking to other data in other sources

› There are two types of data to federate:– Data you might choose to federate if you want to track it, but not track it as

often or as vigorously as a CI’s key attributes (Extended Data)– Data referenced by a CI to provide additional content related to the

functionality of the CI, but not part of the CI itself (Related Data)

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Federation Management

› Configurable Product Registry– Easily configure federated data sources and

how to access them from CMDB

› Federated Data Linking– CMDB provides efficient methods for linking to

external data– “Right click” launch to federated data directly

from CI Relationship Viewer

› Enabled “launch in context”– Link to federated data in context of how data

relates to specific CI

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› Scalable approach to implementing a CMDB

› Leverage existing technologies already in place

› Provides single place to access all information about CI’s

BMC Atrium CMDB’s Federated Approach

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Audience-based service visualizationin the CMDB

Service Model View

Service Model Editor

Service Impact View

Service Impact Manager

IT Process User View

CI Viewer

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Reconcileddata set

BMC IT Discovery

Suite

Change & Configuration Management

3rd Party Infrastructure

Correlated Event Mgt

Object Pointers(logical)

ERP

ActiveDirector

y

Geos,BUs

CI Type

ITSM Suite

BMC® Atrium CMDB logically unifies asset and CI data across tools and processes

BMC data set

CCM data set

3rd Partydata set

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Configuration Item Level

The degree of detail selected to describe a unique entity

MultipleCIs?

SingleCI?

Too much granularity = to difficult to maintain Too little granularity = low usage levels

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Final scoping objective

› The range of responsibility covered by Configuration Management as defined by the Infrastructure:

– Hardware– Software– Telecommunications– People– Documentation– Etc.

› There limiting factors that may affect the final scoping of your CMDB typically these will include:

– Cost / Time– Practicality– Business Practices– Ownership/ Geography– IT structure– Etc.

Only you can determine your CMDB final scoping

The scope of the Infrastructure to be covered by the CMDB

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Importance of Automated Discovery

› Discovery is critical to the success of any CMDB implementation:– Complexity of the infrastructure environment– Infrastructure heterogeneity– Business functions and services are no longer monolithic applications hosted on single

server

“The only constant about IT assets is change. Configurations, users, relationships to multiple business services, even ownership of IT assets can change on a daily basis in an enterprise making it impossible to manually update and maintain the level of accuracy needed of a CMDB that is central to all IT processes. Maintaining the accuracy of the CMDB requires discovery techniques that are comprehensive and automated.”

*CMDB: Building the Fountain of Truth through Automated Discovery, 2006 Ptak, Noel & Associates

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FoundationDiscovery

ConfigurationDiscovery

TopologyDiscovery

IdentityDiscovery

BMC® Discovery – What it does

FoundationDiscovery

ConfigurationDiscovery

TopologyDiscovery

IdentityDiscovery

› Foundation– Assets: What is the accurate

inventory of deployed assets?› Configuration

– Asset Configurations: What are their components and settings?

› Identity– Users: Who is using these

resources?› Topology

– Relationships: What are their interdependencies?

Automated Discovery: The first step toward BSM Success

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Visibility of the Relationships

End-to-end VisibilityViewed in the Service Model

End users

Linked to businessprocesses

Linked to applicationsystems

Linked to supporting infrastructure

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Acknowledgements

Maria Ritchie, Michael Oas and Angie Massicotte

Ken Turbitt

David Chiu

Jeanne Morian

Michael Nicoletti

And Elaine Korn and Kurt Milne

Malcolm Fry

BMC Confidential

Thank You

Q&A