A Configuration Management Database (CMDB) that contains high-quality data can provide significant downstream business value. To achieve this potential, the CMDB must contain validated data that are complete, accurate and current.
Below are five key problem areas that must be addressed before a CMDB can be considered an authoritative source of truth for IT:
- Missing Assets: A CMDB that relies on a single discovery tool or a single source, such as the IT Asset Management (ITAM) system as the baseline, will often have missing assets or services. Relying on a single data source or manual entry point reduces the probability of catching these omissions. A data quality management solution can be used to provide feedback to discovery tools to improve their coverage over time.
- Duplicate Assets: If multiple management tools use different identifiers to define an asset, then it is common for the CMDB to consider the asset identifier to be a different and distinct Configuration Item (CI), creating a unique record for it. A virtualized system might have the same system ID as the source image from which it was cloned, which would also cause it to appear as a duplicate. Concatenating multiple attributes of the device or devices can also create unique identifiers, which can be de-duplicated by a data quality solution.
- Incomplete Configuration Item records: Configuration Items can have missing attributes of a device or service. It is highly recommended to refer to multiple sources when building an Asset or CI record to ensure all the data elements are fully populated with verified data.
- Missing relationships: A CMDB is not an inventory tracking system. It must provide context to the services being delivered. To support change management and operational processes, it must map dependencies between Configuration Items and the eventual business outcomes.
- Stale data: It is good practice to set a threshold of how dated the information in the CMDB is allowed to become. For example, an organization might set a rule to report only an asset as being active if a management tool has detected a heartbeat during the most recent 30-day period. Maintaining the quality of data in the CMDB is a continuous effort and requires periodic/scheduled updates. Automation removes the possibility of human error and increases constant accuracy and process efficiency.
Maintaining a CMDB as a trustworthy and authoritative source for operational systems means that it has to keep pace with the environment as it evolves.
You can learn more by downloading the Blazent white paper, “Failed CMDB Initiatives. The Reasons They Fail and How to Avoid Them,” here.