Re: CMDB Classes

[David Sanders]

Title: RE: CMDB Classes

** James   There are about 40 ITIL certified toolsets on the market, each of which will have its own CMDB which is ITIL certified and based on ‘ITIL best practices’.  They will all have very different structures.  Remedy’s Atrium CMDB is not THE CMDB, it is an example of a CMDB – there are many others, and some of them will be better, and certainly easier to manage.   What level of detail needs to be stored for CI records depends upon the organization’s requirements – the only requirement from an ITIL perspective is that the CI record identifies the infrastructure element uniquely.  For some organizations that might be 10 attributes in a single table/’class’, for others it might be 100s of differing attributes in many tables or even in several federated databases.   David Sanders Remedy Solution Architect Enterprise Service Suite @ Work – ITIL-certified toolset ========================== ARS List Award Winner 2005 Best 3rd party Remedy Application   tel +44 1494 468980 mobile +44 7710 377761 email [EMAIL PROTECTED]   web http://www.westoverconsulting.co.uk   From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of McKenzie, James J C-E LCMC HQISEC/L3 Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 8:26 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: CMDB Classes   David:   So I've been told.   I believe that the CMDB is based upon best practices through ITIL.  However that being said, if you reduce the CMDB down to one class you defeat the purpose of having one, unless you have only one type of device in it.  In my case, I would remove those classes that are not relevant to my job and leave the remainder.  Again, I will emphasize the 'make matters worse' part.  You would basically have one form to handle every different class of device, program, etc.  This can lead to an unwieldy form.   James McKenzie L-3 GSI   ________________________________ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of David Sanders Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 1:16 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: CMDB Classes   ** James   That is not true.  ITIL does not say anything about how you should structure your CMDB or classify your CIs. ITIL defines terminology, suggests roles and gives general guidance on best-practice for certain processes, like who can modify CI records, approval processes, etc.  It also infers certain functional requirements, like being able to relate CIs to RFCs etc. It does not dictate a table structure for the CMDB, any classification system for CIs or what level of granularity you need to adopt when defining your CIs.   Regards   David Sanders Remedy Solution Architect Enterprise Service Suite @ Work ========================== ARS List Award Winner 2005 Best 3rd party Remedy Application   tel +44 1494 468980 mobile +44 7710 377761 email [EMAIL PROTECTED]   web http://www.westoverconsulting.co.uk <http://www.westoverconsulting.co.uk/>   ________________________________ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of McKenzie, James J C-E LCMC HQISEC/L3 Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 7:41 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: CMDB Classes   Kevin: You can go to one class, but that will not be ITIL complaint and may make matters worse. James McKenzie L-3 GSI   -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Kevin Shaffer Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 9:43 AM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: CMDB Classes We are rolling out ITSM 7.x in 5 weeks and the last major hurdle we have in our UAT is CMDB.  The feedback from our users and management is the 68 classes are too confusing and they want to simplify.  I recommended getting the list to 10-15 classes, they went the extreme and said they want one class that stores everything; services, assets, documents, etc. Has anyone gone to this extreme of just using one class.  Any advantages and disadvantages, lessons learned, etc.  I think it would be hard to identify all the attributes to accomodate everything in one class. The driving force behind this is Management feels users will not relate/manage CTI's because noone will know what to classify it as ... Also reporting would be a nightmare with data in multiple forms.  Management feels our Categorization is structured well enough to pull reports based on it from one form (class). TIA Kevin __20060125_______________________This posting was submitted with HTML in it___ __20060125_______________________This posting was submitted with HTML in it___