Item Attributes

This post is for Serio Configuration Managers (or any Serio user changing Item data) on an often overlooked part of the Serio system called Item Attributes.

Item Attributes offer a flexible way to store data against Items (Configuration Items [CIs], or if you like Assets). Typically, an Item Attribute is used to store a characteristic – for instance, the amount of memory installed in a computer, or the type of keyboard it has, or the port number used by a particular webserver. Anything which is part of the make-up of a Configuration Item.

More on Serio CMDB Attributes

This is a follow-up to my earlier ‘Introducing the Serio CMDB’ post – this time I’m going to talk about some of the other data attributes and something new we’ve added. I’ve posted more generally about the Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB) here.

My earlier post discussed three attributes on an Item – Item Type, Product Type and Customer. There is other important data you can add, as follows.

Introducing the Serio CMDB

I’ve been posting previously about getting your own CMDB (Configuration Management Data Base) off the ground. This post is about some of the specifics of the Serio CMDB.

Getting Inventory Data when Machines are Off

A few of the more recent posts have covered aspects of Asset Management, Configuration Management and the CMDB. This post is related to the series about Configuration Management for beginners because it discusses a very useful tool for gathering Configuration information.

This tool is a small software agent which is installed on a target machine and is capable of returning configuration information over the network ‘live’ - but what about those machines that are not switched on when this information is gathered?

Moving from nothing to your first Configuration Items

This post is another in the series about Configuration Management for beginners.

I’ve posted previously about Asset and Configuration Management, compared some of the differences between the two and the challenges that you face if doing either. This post will extend that by examining how you can make a start on your Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB).

Setting-up a CMDB for Beginners

This is a follow-up to my earlier beginners Asset Management and Configuration post.

I described previously how it was difficult to keep an Asset register up to date – but keeping a CMDB up to date is harder because it holds more information.

Here’s the problem. In the previous post I mentioned some computers (Items) that ran enterprise-level services, and how we’d show them on a CMDB. Part of the information we’d store about each Item might include

Asset and Configuration Management Basics

This post is at the request of a customer trying to make sense of Asset Management and Configuration Management. I’ve covered these topics before (search in this blog and you’ll find them) but this post will assume no prior knowledge or experience.

Let’s get started with some definitions – in my own words.

Getting started with a CMDB

This post is for a customer fresh from an ITIL foundation course, looking for guidance or help with getting started with a Configuration Management Database (CMDB).

I’ll start with a reminder of what the CMDB is. It is a documentation for your IT infrastructure, describing how various parts (called Configuration Items, CIs) fit together to deliver services to customers. It typically shows dependencies between CIs, and carries a lot of business-related information in addition to the technical data you would expect.

Accessing Availability Statistics

This post continues the topic of obtaining Availability statistics through Serio. The previous posts were ‘Using Serio to obtain availability statistics’ and ‘More on Availability statistics’.

To recap, I’ve said that:

Asset Management or Configuration Management?

I’m going to return to the subject of the Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB) for this post, prompted by a customer that invited me to look at their CMDB.

ITIL makes a distinction between Asset Management and Configuration Management (the CMDB is what you get from an effective Configuration Management process). I’ll avoid quoting directly but it defines the two thus:

CMDB