Cherwell Feature Spotlight: CMDB (Configuration Management Database)

[Music] [Music] hello my name is Larry Martin and I'm the solutions consultant with beyond 20 today we're going to talk about utilizing or using the CMDB inside of share well in the out of the box configuration now the CMDB has quite a bit of functionality to it so we're not going to cover everything but we will look at the forms look at the data that's held on those forms and how you can use it in your environment will also not be covering hooking the CMDB into your existing SCCM system center configuration management normal we'll be looking at connecting it to Cheryl asset management but just basically looking at what the out-of-the-box CMDB looks like and gives you tying it in to an external system that does inventory and such for you will be a video for a different time so first off the CMDB is accessed by going up to your tools CMDB menu additionally if you're not own CMDB already and you need to create a CMDB record like a config computer or server you would come over to the new button hit the arrow drop-down and its configuration item so when you here CMDB configuration item config computer all of those are related to the CMDB within share one so let's just go ahead and we're not going to create a new item yet let's look at the tools CMDB and stop right here on this screen so on this screen you have a couple of options you can search against all configuration items and you can specify which customer to search against so you have the option dairy so this filtering will lets you start to just config computers you can see we have 38 since I don't have a customer value in here it will search all customers but let's go ahead and put John alert in and you see that we now are returning just the one computer that John allert is set as the primary user you can also filter with a time frame but the search is useful when you're hunting or looking for a particular item if you're making links between items etc so this is your primary tools CMDB find me a CI also on the incident and change and other objects you may have a related item picker because there's a relationship between that object and the config item group that will allow you to say show me the workstation for John Howard because he for example is the requester on the incident so his primary CI would get its laptop you can store multiple devices or CIS for individual customers you can also customize the system to allow you to do quite a few things again we're not going to get into the customizations we're primarily focused on what the out-of-the-box system looks like and how to use it so let's go ahead and just open one of the items that are already in this system and the information has been pulled in so you can see that we have a status we'll go ahead and bring up table management and give you a quick overview of the statuses that a computer CI can have because they do differ between the CIS so see CIA status the field on the actual CI object is asset status which you can see our CI computer has ten different let me order these ten different statuses so it will come in as new and then you would order it you ordered it you're going to mark it as in stop then you're going to bring it as planned because you're planning to build it out and prep it for delivery you know test it and then you're going to deliver it and it's active if that device has an issue it goes down if you pull it and you need to do repair work stolen or missing in action and ultimately retired now obviously organizations will modify these statuses to meet to their particular cycles or life cycle for that particular CI type most of the CIS follow the same basic status or life cycle but you can make changes as needed when you're develop developing your system and actually implementing so we take a look at software license which is only five statuses you know we're going to have a request and then we're going to plant it or order it and then it's either active or expired now these may or maynot not make sense in your environment but those are the statuses in the out of the box system as with other objects within share well if we want certain activities to occur when we change the status we can set up automation processes or make modifications to allow for that we can do things when ownership changes we can do things when primary users change pretty much any other field on the form so just like with the incident or change or any other out-of-the-box object you can set up these automation processes to perform activities for you a lot of times you'll have purchasing activities where you purchase the device go through an approval proper quest approaches go through an approval process get it approved do the purchase and when the purchase order is closed or along the way then you may want to do a creation of the CI in this case a computer record so you've got a lot of flexibility a lot of customization that can be done so on our asset we have a counter inside of share well that wherever you create a new record or if you just want a new asset tag and click the new button and avoiding prevent this from that counter now in some organizations you actually have and use asset tags you can remove the automation functionality there and actually use your asset tagging systems a lot of times in a system instead of having the OS as a free text build we might create a table or a validation for that field so that we only allow these operating systems to be chosen from and it becomes a drop-down you get your OS family your OS group professional home student etc depending on the operating system and you can do customize all of this so the worst kind of service category subcategory where if you pick Windows 7 and only windows into your show up and your OS group might be professional or home and or student whereas if you pick 10 your you know or Windows 7 could even be ultimate so that you can see exactly which OS is on this particular computer primary use this is used to show whether it's an individual workstation shared as to in front office services back office services whatever you need to really in here obviously you can add that computer type is if the laptop is it a computer workstation some clients at tablet as an option here because they consider the tablet or the computer for a mobile device and mobile device is more mobile phones MiFi devices etc and then your manufacturer coming from the product catalog table so that you can get your information and keep it all so that whenever you're ordering you can go through the product catalog etcetera you've also got your models which are limited by the manufacturer building floor in room location information serial number information again a lot of these fields can be populated from your asset management system or you know SCCM cam or other inventory tools that you may have where the data is collected you don't have to try to work it all within share well you can actually connect to an external data source such as the ones I've mentioned and get a lot of this data pulled in and expand those systems to include more information if you need your basic system information is here then you start getting into things like your networking information BIOS your CPU type how many CPUs what the speed is how much memory the machine has what the virtual memory is your video is a free text form if there's a barcode you could scan that in and have the barcode number here your MAC address your friendly name versus your host name the user name is the user that is the primary user your ipv4 and ipv6 addresses and an alternate IP address if needed again hadfield is needed to customize the existing fields require you know right now we have a few fields that are required for saved but we can add to that and under our financial section we have a limited amount of information here where we're tracking the vendor the invoice ID or Pio number when it was purchased you can attach that obviously what your purchase date was whether it was purchased or leased and then what the purchase prices for that device so that's that's the out of the box computer I'm going to go ahead and take a look at server real quick I'm going to save our changes so if we go to our config server you'll see that it has a lot of the same fields but it also has some differences so on a server CI we've got a primary user and/or owner we still have the statuses we didn't talk about it on the computer but when an incident is open against this CI or the user with a CI selected you're going to have an incident count on the CI itself you still have the asset tag primary use but notice the primary use is now different for a server than it was for a desktop or laptop server type domain controller file server web et cetera obviously we can expand on those we still going to have our manufacturer model serial number but we also now have the ability to associate a specific SLA against that server that can be different than your service SFA's and we can identify it as a critical we still have our building floor in room we have our operating system information and we also have our maintenance calendar so we can select a maintenance calendar we can set a default or we can customize maintenance calendars to show when that device can be taxed updated set offline etc this is also useful whenever you're doing chain out-of-the-box change management or customize change management where you still have the functionality there where you can look for impacts or collisions with you want to make a change on this server and you see that you can't because it does not fall within the maintenance window as with the computer we still have the BIOS CPUs memory video mic address friendly name host name we actually have a user name also and then our IP or ipv6 but then we have a starting and ending IP address range so that we can track that information and then our financial information is basically the same we're going to go back to our CIA four computers and we're going to real briefly look at the task pane over here are I want to section so as with incidents again if there was an incident attached it would track the number of open incidents here who the primary user is same type of information that we have on an incident record where if the user has a phone number it will show up what their email address is we can select an owner we can default an owner we can assign an owner we can take ownership we can look at detailed date/time information basic milestones regarding the CI so it was created by Henry Bryce in 2010 and it was last as it is by Cheryl admin on in January of 2016 so as part of Cheryl's development and maintaining this data create a new this will allow us to create a new change request incident or problem related to this CI simply brings up runs a create new business object and so we'll go to that new business object and fill in the data that we need to view the CI network man so down here because of the number of tabs that could be visible on a CI you have some visibility expressions that will allow you to see certain tabs and relationships child objects etc on a CI so view the CI network map comes from the upstream downstream etc so if we you the CI network map we actually see all the connections from this laptop up through our network so this laptop is connected to our second floor Wi-Fi AP access point then it goes to the second floor switch to a course switch to the main firewall and then finally to the ISP firewall so by using this this functionality within the system if for example this course which went down we would actually be able to see that in this visualization and know that this laptop isn't going to get out to the internet but it can still communicate to other devices or systems on that floor depending on what all this second floor switch is connected to if the firewall went out then we would know well it can't get out to the internet but it can get to all other internal systems because the course which would be connected to all the other four switches that are going out to different internal systems so it's a it's a nice feature where you can look at devices that are upstream or downstream over the CI that's your own you can journal against the CI you can have related records such as CI events CI users maybe it's a CI with more than one person that uses it in coming here and link those what incidents what problems and what's changed requests are associated with that CI CI details gives you some information around baseline changes installed software installed services and drives most of this data you're going to want to populate from a system like s ECM or cam but you can maintain it here related CIS so our only related CI really is the Wi-Fi - because that's the only thing we're connected to but we could also connect it to printer and track that within the CI list etc other configuration items you can put them in here any contracts out of the box you can link contracts within your system if you set them up to the CI so that they can be available see obviously we have our different statuses here so real quickly we're going to event in any changes I've made in this demo data in case I need to use it again and we're going to create a new config computer so new configuration item new config computer notice we automatically have an asset tag and if we try to save the record we get told that we must fill in the friendly name out of the box that is the one requirement for save so we're going to call this a test laptop and now we're going to save the record and we've saved it so as I was saying earlier if you tie this into your purchasing process you can actually bring the CIS in and when they're purchased you have a one step that will go through all the related items depending on how you set up your purchasing and create stub CIS for you that you can then come back in here and manage so you would check you know set their status day in stock or building or one of the other statuses but once we have our basic CI record created now we can start setting ownership we can move it to our order status and we can mark it as in stock then we can plant it which is our building and coordinating with the customer to get it deployed and then activate it once we have it in the user saying our customers hands we have an issue with it notice that we have our few more status options or markers in repair but the view more status options will let us choose to move it to any status that we need to so when we cancel that but let's bring this down a little bit so next we're going to bring it down because hey there's a problem with the CI and going to work on it once or through repairing it we can reactivate it but let's say we need to bring it down and we're going to actually pull it and put a temporary in place because we actually have to do work well we can market it as in repair once we're in the down state or at any point we can view more and choose in repair so we'll go ahead and set it in repair and in repair will also let us bring it down or we can come back down here and reactivate it or a few more and say nope we're going to retire this one because there's a problem once we retired the CI we can bring it back to an activated status so here this is just an overview of the CI servers network devices etc work the same way within the out-of-the-box system you do have the various types you have config computer config mobile device configure network device other CI a is kind of a catch-all for CIS that you have not defined specifically printers servers software licenses system which is more like we have an HR system which is comprised of you know some sequel or Oracle databases some servers housing those etc so you want to track the system as a whole rather than the individual components and then finally our telephony equipment and you know this is like I said a quick overview of the out-of-the-box we haven't gotten into any specifics I did touch upon some of the customizations that you can do with it understanding that you can set automation whatever statuses change when various fields within the system changes etc please subscribe to our YouTube channel we produce these videos every week hoping to show you something in the system or to prepare some reference material for you if you have questions you can email us tweet us or post in the channel and someone will respond and sometimes we responded videos [Music]

Channel: Beyond20LLC

Views: 5,797

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Cherwell, Cherwell Software, Cherwell Service Management, CMDB, IT Service Management, ITIL, ITSM, Service Desk, Help Desk, ServiceNow, Configuration Management, Configuration Management Database

Id: 5P9Sc7RaOfc

Length: 22min 42sec (1362 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2017