CMDB Fundamentals Flashcards
Physical and logical components of an infrastructure that needs to be managed to deliver a product or service and are currently, or soon will be, under configuration management. For example, a network device, a server, an application, a delivery truck, or service.
Configuration Item (CI)
Information that further describes a CI such as a name, serial number, manufacturer, operating system.
Attributes
Include the relationships between configuration items. For example, a web application might read data from a specific database, which in turn might depend on a piece of underlying hardware.
Relationship Type
Describes a table that contains and represents a specific type or group of CIs that share common attributes such as a Windows Server, Linux Server, Printer, Virtual Machine, Vehicle, Animal etc.
Class
A set of tools and databases that are used to manage an organizations configuration data.
Configuration Management System (CMS)
A database used to store configuration records throughout their Lifecycle. The Configuration Management System maintains one or more CMDBs, and each CMDB stores attributes of CIs, and Relationships with other CIs.
Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
The core Configuration Item [cmdb_ci] table, which stores the basic attributes of all the CIs. All configuration item classes extend from this table including all hardware and applications.
Base Table
Is a CI whose class has been upgraded, downgraded, or switched. An example of an upgraded CI is a Server record that was upgraded from the Server [cmdb_ci_server] class to the Windows Server [cmdb_ci_win_server] class.
CI Reclassification
The CI class is updated to a class that is less generic in the class hierarchy, and the newly assigned class has additional attributes. For example, an upgrade occurs if a CI is moved from the Server [cmdb_ci_server] class to the Windows Server [cmdb_ci_win_server] class.
CI Class Upgrade
The CI class is updated to a class that is more generic in the class hierarchy, and the newly assigned class has less attributes. For example, a downgrade occurs if a CI is moved from the Windows Server [cmdb_ci_win_server] class to the Server [cmdb_ci_server] class.
CI Class Downgrade
The CI class is in a different branch in the class hierarchy and has a different set of attributes than the current class. For example, reclassifying a CI from the Linux Server [cmdb_ci_linux_server] class to the Windows Server [cmdb_ci_win_server] class.
CI Class Switch
A table that extends another table is called a child class, and the table it extends is the parent class. A table can be both a parent and child class both extending and providing extensions for other tables. For example, the Server table extends the Computer table and the Windows Server table extends the Server table, thus making the Server table both a Parent and Child class.
Parent and Child Class
On the Now platform, when creating a hardware asset, a corresponding CI will be automatically created or when a CI is discovered for the first time and inserted into the CMDB, a corresponding asset record will be automatically created. The asset and the CI is connected through out the CI/Asset lifecycle.
Asset:
Often starts during the procurement process, but may be created when a discovery tool finds the CI for the first time
Is part of the financial lifecycle
Configuration
Item (CI):
Often starts when a discovery tool finds the CI for the first time, but may be created during the procurement process
Is part of the technical operations
Asset vs. CI
- Asset DB is inventory + financial data
- CMDB is inventory + relationships
Asset DB vs. CMDB
The CMDB is the authoritative source of some information:
Support group
Contact
Owner
The CMDB is not the authoritative source of all information:
Contents of all server and application configuration files
Server log files.
CMDB vs. Authoritative Sources
