CMDB and provisioning
GOLD AWARD:
CA CMDB r11.1
As data centers become increasingly complex--marked by components such as distributed applications, virtualization, service-oriented architecture and heterogeneous infrastructure--IT administrators struggle to manage all the various moving parts that are involved with day-to-day operations. One strategy that IT managers are employing to track technology and streamline the change management processes that occur in the data center on a daily basis is to implement configuration management databases (CMDBs).
In essence, CMDBs are repositories of information about configuration items (CIs)--all the applications, hardware devices, software components, users and even policies that comprise the services IT delivers. Given the dynamic nature of IT environments, the best CMDBs are those that include functionality for determining the relationship among CIs, as well as the ability to validate changes and reconcile any unauthorized changes against the officially-sanctioned environment.
For the 2007 crop of CMDB software, judges gave top kudos to CA for its CA CMDB r11.1 that was released in April. This newly-enhanced version of CA's CMDB includes important functionality such as automated relationship discovery and mapping (via the CA Cohesion Application Configuration Manager that is integrated with the CA CMDB), impact analysis of planned changes and the ability for IT managers to build and manage CIs through reporting. In addition, r11.1 supports data federation by allowing data centers to collect a variety of CI information from a variety of data sources federate and combine it with the contents of the CMDB—a model that can simplify control of an IT infrastructure.
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