This document walks you through the below topics:
Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is a centralized repository used to store information about all the significant entities in your IT environment. The CMDB acts as a data storehouse and could be considered the heart of the IT Service Management (ITSM). The CMDB includes Configuration Items (CIs), which are critical resources to your organization. It is by analyzing the CIs you may decide on the need for implementing a Change. The CIs could be Assets, IT Services, Users, Support Groups, Hardware, installed Software Applications, Documents, Business Services, etc, that are part of your IT system.
CMDB and the related configuration management activities together act as a hub of modern IT operations. This allows the organization to manage data of discrete IT components together at one place. The CMDBs support the organization in performing service management activities such as incident management, change management, and problem management. Using CMDB, we can manage all the CIs that are critical to an organization and their relationships. You can analyze Business Impact of a CI, perform impact analysis before implementing a Change, and conduct a Root Cause Analysis of the incident. It thus acts as a vital source of decision-making, thereby improving cost, quality, and performance of the IT services offered by the organization.
CIs within the CMDB are classified under different CI Types. The CI Types are represented by Fields and Relationships, where the fields are data elements that describe the characteristics of the CIs under each CI Type. A Relationship denotes the link between two CIs that identify the dependency or connection between them.
Example: Consider the CI types 'Web Server', 'Database Server', and 'File Server' that inherit the CI Type 'Server'. They might comprise fields such as 'Model', 'Service Tag', 'Processor Name', etc and might be connected by relationships such as 'Managed By', 'Runs on', etc.
You can keep a track of all pending requests, changes, etc raised for the CIs. You can use Relationship Maps for better impact analysis while planning for a Change.
Asset management is different from the configuration management database (CMDB). While it’s true that both systems may include the same asset or other items, the purpose of the systems are very different. An asset database simply contains a list of Assets, whereas the CMDB is designed to support a vast IT structure where the interrelation between the CIs is clearly defined and maintained. The below table illustrates how asset management differs from configuration management:
| Sl.No | Asset Management | Configuration Management (CMDB) |
| 1. | Assets are self-contained, autonomous entities that provide intrinsic financial value to the organization. | CMDB is a database that holds Assets, Data Centers, Storage Devices, etc, which are critical to the organization, as Configuration Items (CIs). |
| 2. | It deals with Financial & Lifecycle aspects of assets. | It deals with Configuration Items (CIs) and their relationships. |
| 2. | The main users are people, who are in-charge of Inventory and life cycle aspects of assets. | The main users are service providers, who use this as a decision-making tool to provide improvements to the existing IT services. |
There are a few important components associated with the CMDB configuration. The list is as follows:
Configuration Item (CI) type: Defines the classification of a group of CIs with similar properties. The CI types contain fields which are specific to all the CIs under that type.
Example: Assets, Data Center, Storage Device, Storage, Computer, Department, People, etc.
Configuration Item (CI): It is the fundamental block of CMDB. A CI is a critical resource for your organization. The CIs can be categorized under different CI types, and CI to CI relationships can be defined.
Example: Business Service, Marketing Service, and Customer Service are CIs of the CI type Service.
Relationship type: Defines the nature of the relationship between different CIs and CI types. A relationship type consists of a name and its inverse name.
Example: Consider a relationship where the 'Tomcat server is Hosted In Linux Server'. In the other way, we can say the 'Linux Server Hosts the Tomcat Server'. Here, 'Hosted In' is the direct relationship type and 'Hosts' is the inverse relationship type.
CI type to CI type relationship: These relationships, defined by the SDCMDBAdmin, are the suggested relationships between CI types. The SDCMDBAdmin decides the relationship type, the target CI type, and the cardinality.
CI to CI relationship: Defines how one CI is connected to another CI. CI to CI relationships can be either custom or suggested.
Relationship Map: Presents a visual representation of the dependencies between different CIs and the system flow. The relationship map can be used to perform an impact analysis of a Change on any CI.
The relationship map represents the relationships between only the CIs and not the CI types.