I thought I’d comment on a few things that have been written over on The IT Skeptic regarding ITIL. Skeptic states in his post that ITIL is not brain surgery, and I absolutely agree with him. Though he and I disagree, I think, on a coupleof finer points regarding whether or not there’s any value to having the certification, I think he has an excellent point. In particular, in discuss the development of a CMDB.
CMDB is part of the Service Transitoin lifcycle. It’s basically a database of information related to your IT systems and how those systems relate to one another. For example, my CMDB might contain information regarding servers, desktops, network routers, switches, etc. This information is supposed to help me more effectively manage my network because, as the theory goes, having the information readily available means I can more accurately determine the interdependencies of systems on my network.
Implementing a CMDB is a fairly straight forward process. In fact, there are a number of “off-the-shelf” tools that would qualify as “CMDB’s”. So how to you implement it? You start with your plan. How much information do you want/need to track? What kind of information do you want? How often do you expect that information to change? How is your network configured? etc.
One very useful tool that I’ve used is ServiceDesk Plus from Manage Engine. It utilizes SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) to gather information about the resources available on your network and store them in it’s database. It also tracks “ownership” information of those resources, such as asset assignment, purchase details, and change details, all components of a good CMDB. Another useful aspect of ServiceDesk Plus is that by using the CMDB aspects, I can more accurately manage service desk requests because the requesting party’s system information is immediately accessible from the technician interface.
Now granted, SDP is probably not going to be extraordinarily useful for a network with 40,000 nodes. But for the small to medium-sized business, it’s an excellent tool. Another thing to remember is that the CMDB is only one part of your overall ITIL adherence. There’s also the service desk, process management, project management, incident management, availability management, change management, and much, much more. But if you’re looking for a simple tool to begin the process, I’d highly recommend the ServiceDesk Plus application.