Configuartion Management Database (CMDB)

Today, when standards such as Information Technology Infrastructure Library is catching attention of IT industry as a whole, many organizations are looking to implement ITIL, or looking out for one of the cool vendors to implement the same for them.

Going forward, CMDB would play critical role in implementation of standards such as ITIL. CMDB is all about managing configuration item (CI) data in a logical manner. It is about sharing CI data in a common data store and ease the complexity related to managing non-critical attribute data in application database. CI data could be easily shared owing to its centralized approach and without the interference of complex setup.

CMDB is a single, centralized source of record that would enable the IT organizations to discover, manage and verify the CI data against the best practices recommended by respective software vendors.

CMDB is not only the storage of CI data but also a well thought strategy of managing CI data across the enterprise.

What is a configuration item (CI)? CI could be a hardware, software, employees that has configurable attributes. A CI is an instance of a physical, logical and conceptual entity that is a part of the environment and has configurable attributes. A hardware’s configurable attributes could be serial number, vendor, IP address etc. A software’s configurable attributes could be port, IP address, vendor etc.