Hi everyone:
I wanted to discuss the practicality issues of using SMS to populate the CMDB. I understand all (or virtually all) of the theory, but now I want to discuss the real-world practicality of it. By my estimation, the only real-world value I see in using SMS to populate the CMDB is that it saves someone from having to pound the keyboard to get system information into it. That's it. I've heard some folks talk about using SMS to identify deltas within the hardware inventory. That is, on Day 1, Dell Workstation 1 was discovered by SMS. On Day 9, Dell Workstation 1 is missing. That's a delta. An inventory manager can then be notified of that delta so that he can go figure out if Dell Workstation 1 got up and "walked away." But the way SMS is configured at most large sites, this would not work. In some configurations, items do not get removed from the SMS database until their machine account in the Active Directory is removed AND the machine fails to respond to polls for X amount of time. This does the enterprise no good in preventing, say, theft, as a thief does not request that the computer's machine account be removed from the Active Directory before he steals it! Theft prevention and loss prevention are two of the justifications in the total cost of ownership calculation, according to ITIL. But SMS alone won't get you there. You need something like RFID to truly identify instances of missing hardware. So what does SMS get you other than not having to pound a keyboard? Thoughts? Norm _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org ARSlist:"Where the Answers Are"
