Basic Concepts 1. What is a CMDB
cmdb--configures the management database to efficiently control and manage changing IT infrastructures and IT services through identification, control, maintenance, and inspection of enterprise IT resources, and provides accurate configuration information for other processes such as incident management, problem management, change management, Release management, and more.
The role of 2.CMDB
A large number of IT equipment and services based on these IT equipment are difficult to manage effectively. At the same time, the enterprise's IT environment is changing, how to assess the impact of an accident or change in a device or service, and how to provide IT resources for other processes the current accurate configuration information is a major challenge for the enterprise.
The CMDB was born to solve these problems:
- Information consolidation: How do you integrate many IT equipment, it services, and even the departments and people that use them in a single, complete library? This integrated information will make it possible to effectively and efficiently manage IT equipment and services. Can automatically discover a variety of host, network equipment, applications. Support for all-network discovery, specifying subnets, specifying configuration items three ways to discover.
- Relational mapping: How do you visualize the physical and logical relationship mappings between hardware, software, and IT services? Enables IT staff to see their dependencies on each other and to determine the potential impact that it components have on customers. IT staff can significantly improve IT service levels if they are able to see their impact on the company or customer's business in real time. Using the topology diagram form, visualize the relationship between IT resources, departments, and people, and can realize the definition and maintenance of association relationship by dragging directly on the topology map. The CMDB not only stores the attributes and associations of IT resources, but also automatically associates IT resources with incidents, problems, changes, and releases.
- Process support: How to provide accurate IT equipment, IT service configuration information for other IT operations (including the accident, problem, change, release and other information of the current equipment or service), for accident management, problem management, change management, release management, accurate configuration information will greatly improve the operational efficiency of the process. In incidents, issues, changes, and release processes, you can quickly see the full and accurate information about the IT resources involved in the current process.
- Software Library and Hardware library: How to ensure that the software and hardware applied to the IT environment are authorized and tested? This is a prerequisite for ensuring the quality of IT environments and providing stable IT services. By supporting the DSL (Definitive software library, the final software library) and DHS (definitive Hardware store, the final hardware library), the software and hardware used in release management are authorized and tested.
Market Environment Commercial CMDB Products
Features : complete, stable, but closed source, expensive, two times difficult to develop.
- Bmc:atrium CMDB (Remedy), one of the founders of the CMDB Standard, is already very mature in all aspects, the relevant technical documents and help manuals are very rich and perfect, because many companies in the development of their own CMDB products, are based on BMC technical documentation as a reference.
- Hp:ucmdb (OpenView), is a relatively mature and widely used CMDB products, bloated and large, rich in functionality.
- Ca:unicenter
- Ibm:ccmdb (Tivoli)
Open Source CMDB Products
Features: open source, free, but usually only achieve the CI, relationship, attribute three elements of the model building, other such as automatic discovery, relationship visualization, data security and integrity protection is relatively deficient.
- Onecmdb, one of the earliest open source CMDB products, Java development, nearly two years of development stalled, has not been updated.
- Itop cmdb,php Development, suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises, documentation-rich, database-dependent MySQL.
- Cmdbuild,java development, active development, rich documentation, database dependent PostgreSQL.
Summarize
Personally, the current feasible development scenarios are: Based on the selection of Cmdbuild (Java) or ITop (PHP), refer to the BMC's mature documentation for a modest two-time development.
Reference documents
- "Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Federation specification"
- Bmc-step-by-step Guide to Building a CMDB
- "Bmc_cmdb_data_modeling_guide"
- Itop Installation Tutorials
- Itop User Guide
- Itop Forum
- Itop Book: "Open source IT Operations management software--itop Implementation Guide"
- Cmdbuild official website
- Cmdbuild Installation Tutorials
CMDB Research Report
