CMDB update: when and how to revive your dead CMDB?

Your CMDB is dead. If you’re not sure why, keep reading. This could be the wake-up call for you to finally update your CMDB.

Your CMDB, or configuration management database, is responsible for keeping track of your company’s assets—everything from laptops to software licenses. 

But without some basic maintenance and upkeep, it can quickly become outdated and useless. I’ll explain why that happens, as well as how to revitalize your CMDB so that it contains the most up-to-date information about your organization.

Your CMDB is stale because it’s incomplete.

If your CMDB is missing data, you’re not going to be able to make the best decisions about your company’s IT systems. This is the most basic reason why a CMDB needs revamping: if there’s information missing from it and no one knows how to find that information or where it goes, then everyone has to work harder at their jobs than they would otherwise need to do.

Your team members might not know what kinds of details should go into their ERPs; as a result, they may end up leaving out important information about products and services that are used in production or by customers. If your team members don’t know how many servers are out there (or which ones), then they can’t see whether or not any changes have been made since last time around—and this lack of visibility could lead them down blind alleys looking for answers when none exist yet at all!

Your CMDB is stale because you haven’t checked in with your people.

You may have noticed that the CMDB is a little stale. You don’t go by it as much anymore, and when you do, it’s more like a ritual than an actual tool. It’s not useful to anyone anymore—or worse, it’s not accurate!

The reason for this problem is actually quite simple: your CMDB has grown stale because of how you’re using it. It depends entirely on the people who input data into your CMDB; if they aren’t checking in with each other regularly and keeping things up-to-date, then there won’t be any value in your CMDB at all. This can happen to any company that uses their CMDB incorrectly (or doesn’t use their CMDB at all).

It may seem obvious to say this out loud when talking about yourself or others who are involved with maintaining your own software system—but sometimes we forget exactly how important this kind of communication is within our teams as well as between them.

Your CMDB is stale because you’re only updating it a few times a year.

A CMDB is a living document, and it needs to be updated regularly to keep pace with the ever-changing world of IT. If your CIs are organized by business function, they should be updated at least once every quarter—but preferably monthly or even weekly! This will ensure that your information is current and accurate, which will help with continuity of operations when an emergency occurs.

How to update your dead CMDB?

You can update your CMDB by finding the right people to manage it

One of the best ways to revitalize your CMDB is by finding the right people to manage it. As with most things, there are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to who should be in charge of your CMDB. However, generally speaking, this person should have:

• A solid understanding of ITIL and how it relates to CMDBs and SDLCs
• At least five years’ experience administering enterprise-level IT systems (including incident management)
• A good understanding of information technology security

You can update your CMDB by taking advantage of automation and AI

If automation and AI are here to stay, then it’s time to realize that they can be used not just for manual processes but also for the heavy lifting. Many organizations have already automated the mundane tasks of their CMDB, but the way these tools are being utilized still needs an upgrade. For example, many organizations use automation to create a list of components and relationships between them, which is helpful in identifying what goes where. However, in order for an organization to truly understand their environment, they also need intelligence around each component so that they can understand its context – what it does, how it works with other components (and people), as well as any dependencies on other systems or processes that rely on this component working properly.

Automation has been used in different ways across industries: bank account analysis; medical records management; insurance claims processing; inventory management systems – all these workflows have been automated due to the fact that humans cannot keep up with them otherwise! In case you missed my point earlier: While this is great news for businesses looking at reducing costs through efficiency gains made possible by automation technology – there will always be room for improvement when using such technologies because we live in complex environments where change happens constantly.”

You can update your CMDB by building consistent reviews of your inventory and processes

You can revitalize your CMDB by building consistent reviews of your inventory and processes. This can be done by following the following steps:

• Review your inventory and processes on a regular basis
• Review your inventory and processes with the same people
• Review your inventory and processes with the same people on a regular basis

Your CMDB contains the most up-to-date information about your organization if you find the right way to maintain it

The rule of thumb is that your CMDB should contain as much up-to-date information about your organization as possible. You can achieve this by making it easy to add new assets, update existing assets and delete obsolete ones.

Here are some easy ways to keep your CMDB current:

Establish a process for adding new assets into the system.

For example, if you have employees create service requests for new IT equipment or software purchases, they can also enter those items into the CMDB at the same time (assuming there’s a way to connect this entry with their existing asset records). This automation takes away any need for manual entry and ensures accuracy. It also frees up resources so they can focus on more important tasks like managing incidents or working with customers.

Make it easy for users to update existing records in the CMDB when changes occur in their environment

For example, due to an incident or change management process such as server migration or network reconfiguration—by providing them with appropriate tools such as templates for categorizing changes based on impact level; role-based access controls (RBAC) settings that allow authorized users only modify certain objects within each category; alerts sent via email when predefined events occur such as changes made by unauthorized personnel, and so on. 

CMDB best practices

• Use a CMDB to keep track of your IT assets and their relationships to each other.
• Use a CMDB to manage the lifecycle of your IT assets.
• Use a CMDB to manage the relationships between your IT assets and your business processes.
• Use a CMDB to keep track of your infrastructure and changes over time.
• Use a CMDB to keep track of the relationships between infrastructure components and configuration items (CI).
• Use a CMDB to ensure both change processes and incident management processes are effective. This will help you better prevent incidents from occurring. You will also react more quickly when they do occur. You can resolve them quickly without affecting critical business processes or impacting customer satisfaction levels.
• Define your business objectives so that you can find the right way for organizing data in order for it all to work together properly.
• Keep track of all changes in order for you not only know what changes need implementing but also where those changes should go into effect immediately.
• Ensure critical changes are implemented whenever they need because this ensures better customer satisfaction levels by having everything working properly before it’s needed again later on down the road (which could cost both time and  money).

Build a competent and up-to-date CMDB with Virima

First, you need to understand the purpose of the CMDB. The CMDB is a repository of information about your IT assets and their relationships. It should be accessible by all stakeholders from IT operations teams to business units. They can now work together more effectively and efficiently than with siloed systems or spreadsheets.

It’s imperative that all relevant stakeholders have access to this data at all times. This means no waiting until someone opens up the system after hours or on weekends. It also means no relying on manual processes such as emailing reports back and forth when there are updates instead of having real-time updates available at any time.

Finally, in order for your CMDB system to accurately reflect changes within your organization over time (and therefore stay relevant), you need continuous updates from people who know what’s happening with technology throughout your organization. Otherwise, its usefulness will deteriorate quickly over time as new technologies emerge without reflecting its contents.

Virima’s CMDB helps you build a competent CMDB.

It includes dynamic and filterable visualizations of:

• complex CMDB relationships in CMDB asset discovery,
• automatic application dependency and service mapping,
• ITIL-compliant service asset and configuration management,
• easy-to-follow review processes

This ensures a pristine configuration management database. This means you have the tools you need to make sure your company has accurate data about its assets.

You can track hundreds of hardware and software configuration attributes for data center, edge, cloud and IoT assets. You can use granular business rules to automate the promotion of specific blueprint updates to the enterprise CMDB. And it’ll all be easy to follow along with because it’s all user-friendly!

It’s time to update your CMDB the right way!

The problem with CMDBs is that they’re not really about configuration management. They’re about collecting all your devices and their configurations into one place so you can see what’s where and what it’s doing. But the hard part isn’t just finding the devices. It’s making sure they’re up-to-date and accurate. This means knowing when there’s been a change and who made it. This is something most CMDBs don’t do very well.

But don’t worry, Virima has you covered. With Virima, you can finally build a CMDB you can trust by automating the process of finding all your IT assets and cataloging their configurations. That way you’ll never have to manually enter a device again or worry about whether or not someone’s changed something without telling anyone else about it. Just run our scans every day to find new assets, identify changes at existing ones, and get a full history for every single device in your environment.

Find out more about how Virima can help your CMDB efforts by requesting a demo right away!