Providing Affordable IT Management to SME's The starting point of Configuration Management
There are few areas where large organisation envy smaller companies, but in the world of ITIL, configuration management is a subject where smaller is better!
Configuration Management has two principles at its core
1) Know what IT equipment you have to a level of agreed detail
2) Know how it interacts with every other bit of IT equipment
Let me explain: I have an office with a broadband internet connection. This is spread out over my office via a wireless router to two PC’s but one additional PC is plugged directly into port number 1 of the router. Each of these PC’s run different applications and are not directly networked. Any data sharing is via USB keys and backups are carried out using portable hard drives. We have one printer and scanner connected to the key desktop PC. If the other PC’s want to print or scan, they use this PC moving the data either by email or the USB key. The PC’s have similar operating systems (all Windows XP) but have different specifications and software. I have an application which downloads files from an internet based subscription service.
By documenting all of my “PC Assets”, I start getting a view of what I own, but more importantly the details behind it. Each of these assets are known as “Configuration Items” or CI’s and against each one, I record its “Attributes” eg 120mb hard drive, 128mb ram, 1.6mhz processor, Windows XP SP2. I record the level of detail that is useful to me which may include the other software loaded onto each PC. For the router, I might include the technical configuration details like the settings and the “IP Address”. The internet based service is an interesting one as I don’t actually “own the asset” but my services are linked to to. For this I would create an asset record called “Internet service 1”
What I now have is “Asset Management”, a good place to be and miles ahead of most large organisations (but that’s another story!)
To move to configuration management, the links and dependencies of each of these assets need to be made.
Let me give a few examples:
1) PC 3 is directly linked to Port 1 of my router
2) Printer 1 is connected to PC 2
3) Scanner 1 is connected to PC 2
4) Backup data for PC1 is held on Portable Hard drive 1
5) Application A on PC 3 gets information from website “Internet service 1” via my internet service delivered by Router 1
Now I have a clear understanding of how my services are delivered…………… Why is this important? That’s the topic of the next blog on this matter In the meantime, if you need some more information about starting off with asset management, email us requesting "CO1 - Starting with asset"
3rd July 2009