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Plan your successful CMDBdeploymentAchieve high-performing business services using a healthy CMDBWhat’s in this Success PlaybookBehind every successful CMDB deployment is a detailed configuration management plan forimplementing, designing, and sustaining a configuration management capability. And whenyou take the time to develop a configuration management plan, the result is greater businessservice performance. This Success Playbook will help you:• Articulate your goals• Form a configuration management team• Establish a governance structure• Understand configuration item design• Integrate with key business processesMinimize outages, maximize savingsUnplanned outages can cost millions in just hours. With a robust configuration managementcapability, IT can reduce unplanned outage costs and directly enhance business outcomes. Todo that, you need a strategic plan that establishes your maturity and trust with business owners
Key takeawaysThe most important things to know• Have clear goals for your configuration management process and CMDB. A well-configured CMDB can help you manage service health, understand service consumption patterns, and calculate the cost of services—but you need to understand your most important business priorities to guide CMDB development
• Start small and iterate. Build a solid inventory of CIs tied to specific use cases. If you find yourself populating your CMDB with items that don’t tie back your business priorities or use cases, you’re probably off track
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The payoff of getting this rightA well-configured CMDB can save you as much as 40% in IT costs—and help you avoid the costsof unplanned outages
What you need to get startedPrerequisitesYou need a general knowledge of ITIL and of configuration management methodology. Youalso need to understand the features and functions supported by the CMDB
Playbook overviewThe four stages toward a healthy CMDB:Stage 1 – Set your directionStage 2 – Build a team and a governance modelStage 3 – Design your configuration planStage 4 – Show your CMDB’s value to other organizationsThe takeaway – Manage service healthAt the end of these stages, you’ll see that the takeaway is your ability to manage service healthbetter than ever. You will also be able to understand:• The distinction between business services that offer a competitive advantage (and require investment) vs. those that are commoditized (and should be looked to for cost savings)• Your technical debt and support risk profiles for services• Consumption patterns for your services• The technology architectures used to deliver your services• The cost of your services, as well as your ability to deliver against SLAs 2© 2021 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registeredtrademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respectivecompanies with which they are associated
Stage 1 – Set your directionClear configuration management goals, objectives, and outcomes are the keys todesigning a great configuration management capability that leads to a rock -solid CMDB
Designing a great configuration management capability starts with clear configurationmanagement goals, objectives, and outcomes. Make sure your configuration managementefforts are aligned to your business objectives
Write well-stated goals and objectivesCompanies with successful CMDB deployments always articulate what to accomplish, theirapproach, intended business outcomes, and their ongoing measurements of those outcomes
What What do you want to accomplish? How Define your approach, constraints, and assumptions
Why What are the business outcomes that CMDB will support? Measure How do you know you're doing it right?Table 1: A quick way to set goals and objectivesStart by writing a list of use cases to focus your goals. These use cases should directly tie to thestrategic initiatives of your company. ServiceNow® customers often start with these: 3© 2021 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registeredtrademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respectivecompanies with which they are associated
QUESTIONS YOU'RE MAPPED USE CASE HOW DOES THIS TIE BACK TO ADDRESSING CMDB? An infrastructure component Data center migration Accurate infrastructure broke in the middle of data configuration and its impact center migration. How would on business services this impact services? We need to change Change management Accurate infrastructure something in our data center. configuration and its impact How will this affect our on business services business? Our monitoring tool notified us Cloud-first strategy Mapping of cloud services that a metric has exceeded a along with on-premises threshold that happens to be infrastructure in the cloud. How urgent is this to our business? We're spending lots of money Asset management Accurate tracking of on our IT infrastructure. Where infrastructure and applications are these components deployed and for what business applications?Table 2: Questions that customers ask when setting up key use cases tailored to support business initiativesto accelerate goals and objective definitions 4© 2021 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registeredtrademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respectivecompanies with which they are associated
Customer exampleTable 3 shows you how one customer outlined goals and focused on key business priorities usingthe Why section
What • Implement configuration management How • Executed completely and accurately • Done with automation • Satisfies audit and compliance requirements • Reduces technological complexity • Improves planning, coordination, and communication of changes • Moves us from application-centric to business-centric Why • Understand the impact of changes proactively • Support data center migration • Enabler to digital transformation • Support cloud first strategy Measure • Improved perception of trusted system of record • Incident reductionTable 3: A customer example of setting goals and objectivesThis document shows more examples of how to effectively set goals and objectives
EXPERT TIP Write your goals so they help your organization achieve its strategic initiatives
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Stage 2 – Build a team and a governance modelWhen you build your configuration management team and governance structure and getearly buy-in from executives, it helps create credibility and trust in your configurationmanagement process over the long term
The team should have autonomy to carry out configuration management responsibilities withoutbeing bogged down by daily support functions. This team should operate independently fromthe day-to-day “keep the lights on” support functions
With your team in place, define each member’s role, responsibilities, and authority. Thendocument these things to ensure they have the ownership and support to make the changesrequired
ROLE RESPONSIBILITY TITLE CM executive sponsor Oversees configuration management Senior executive plan implementation in all CCB process owner departments within the company CM process owner Has ownership and is accountable Senior manager for its strategic development; Ensures CCB chair CM plan is rolled out Configuration manager Manages delivery of CM services and IT manager documentation of operating Full CCB member/guest procedures member CM system analyst Performs daily configuration IT analyst management tasks with minimal Full CCB member/guest direction member Performs daily configuration CM specialist IT admin management tasks with direction Full CCB member/guest from CM system analyst memberTable 4: Typical assignments for a configuration management teamTable 4 shows how one ServiceNow customer outlined its team’s roles and responsibilities beforedeploying the CMDB
To learn more about identifying and assigning roles, read this detailed guide
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Implement governanceAs part of this team, ServiceNow customers form a configuration control board (CCB). The CCBserves as a steering committee to make sure there is always a good value proposition forconfiguration management efforts. The CCB is essential and is there to ensure your configurationmanagement project stays on track, from a value proposition perspective, and remainseffective for the company. Voting members of your CCB should be leadership team memberswho are directly accountable for the strategic initiatives of the IT department and close enoughto the day-to-day infrastructure support team efforts to understand the use cases
For an example of how our customers implement governance through a CCB, take a look at thisCCB Charter document
We’ve found that the titles and roles of the CM team vary in each company. For instance, theServiceNow IT infrastructure and operations team uses the RACI matrix (Responsible,Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to manage configuration management tasks. For example,when they publish a new configuration item (CI), each of the four members of the team ensuresthat updates are made successfully. Both the configuration manager and analyst areaccountable and responsible for publishing the new CI; while the CI owner and process ownersare informed of this change to ensure all systems are updated and communicated tostakeholders
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CL OWNER CONFIGURATION CONFIGURATION PROCESS USER ANALYST MANAGER OWNER Process planning and design Produce configuration management plan C R R/A Define CMDB structure C R R/A Determine Cl selection guidelines C R R/A Populate CMDB C R/A Perform initial audit R R/A C Baseline CMDB I R/A I Configuration identification Validate update request C R R/A Validate Cl attributes R R/A Review invalid attributes C R R/A Update CMDB C R R/A Publish new Cl type I R R/A I Configuration control Validate update request C R/A Validate Cl attributes I R/A Review invalid attributes R/A C Update CMDB I R/A Status accounting and reporting Authorize or reject report request I R R/A Create or update configuration R R/A management report Generate configuration management report R R/A Distribute configuration management report I R R/A Verification and audit Approve verification and audit request Execute audit R/A Reconcile with CMDB R/A Determine corrective action R/A I Initiate corrective CMDB action R/A Execute corrective action 1 R/AR: Responsible, A: Accountable, C: Consulted, I: InformedTable 5: ServiceNow IT infrastructure and operations team RACI matrix that is used to assign configurationmanagement team tasks 8© 2021 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registeredtrademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respectivecompanies with which they are associated
One of our customers clearly documents tasks that require approval from their governanceboard and those that can be accomplished by the application support team. For instance,application support can modify version, lifecycle, business owner, and relationships. While fieldslike business criticality, SLA, and operational status (live, retired, etc.) have to go through theboard for formal approval. We like this approach since it clearly identifies the responsibilities ofthe stakeholders
EXPERT TIP Create a structured team and a steering committee to keep everyone focused on the goals of keeping a business-driven configuration management plan
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Stage 3 – Design your configuration planStart small and grow gradually as you design your CMDB with conf iguration items
Take the time to familiarize yourself with the CMDB and its features and functions. Develop anunderstanding of the design options for the CMDB and the broader ecosystem of federatedsystems and data feeds
Your CMDB is populated with configuration items (CIs), which must be classified for you to havea properly managed CMDB. When you start this process, start small and grow gradually. Alsomake sure that there are no duplicate CIs
WHAT IS A CI? A CI is one of the most important components of your CMDB. It’s simply an application, infrastructure, or service component you’re managing. It can be a physical server, an app running on a virtual server, or a business service
Decide which CI classes and attributes you need to support the use cases you identified inStage 1. Most organizations start simple and make incremental improvements as they gainexperience. From this, you should be able to identify the types of CI classes you will need tomanage. You will need to make sure these CI classes are at the appropriate level—as in whatlevel of definition is meaningful to the use cases you identified earlier. As a generalrecommendation, start with using the CI classes defined out of the box for CIs that can bediscovered with the Now Platform®. These CI classes have been vetted by thousands of ourcustomers and should contain all of the attributes your efforts will need
For example, you might start with a hardware CI class, so you assign some simple attributes: CPU,memory, etc. As you build your CMDB, you’ll map computers, servers, routers, switches, and soon. Each of these CIs will have attributes and each one of them will have relationships anddependencies
Heads up! Your CI tables can get out of control quickly if you don’t simplify them! Keep their names intuitive so they are easy to identify and remember
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OUR CUSTOMERS START BY CLASSIFYING THESE CIS: • Windows server • Network router • Linux server • Network switch • Firewall • Storage • Load balancer • Application server • DatabaseOne large insurance customer warns that it’s easy to add data to the CMDB but harder tomaintain the model
For CI classes that are not discoverable, you might need to extend an out-of-the-box class
Figure 1 depicts how the CMDB uses object-oriented inheritance in the creation of all CI classes
If you are using ServiceNow Discovery, it will find all the network infrastructure, applications, andservices and populate them into the CMDB. Dependency maps let you see where your CIssupport a critical service
For example, the loss of disk drives may take a database instance down, which affects therequisition service the HR department uses to order equipment for new employees. If you areusing ServiceNow Discovery or Service Mapping (features in the ITOM Visibility product), thedependencies between discoverable CIs will be built for you automatically as the CMDB isupdated by discovery updates. See Figure 2
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Figure 2: ServiceNow CMDB dependency mapFor the logical “business layers” that are not discoverable, you will have to define therelationships between discoverable and non-discoverable CIs comprising your business model
For each CI class, you will need to make sure the CMDB is configured properly. Use CI ClassManager to configure the rules for each CI class to ensure you have all the necessaryinformation about your CIs in one place. The CMDB stores all the information you want tocapture and manage on an ongoing basis and can record relationships between attributes inthe CMDB
In order to manage changes to the CMDB, we recommend setting up configuration control thateliminates the risks of unnecessary tweaks to the CIs. Based on customer implementations, wesuggest that you proactively manage CIs and their dependencies when they’re added,deleted, and modified. When a business process like incident management requests a changeto the CIs, you should:1. Allow change requests via Change Management; you can easily do this using the Propose Change feature if have ServiceNow Change Management enabled
2. Assign proper privileges to the authorized users to make changes; normally it’s a member of your team such as a CM analyst
3. Validate CI attributes against agreed criteria in your configuration management plan
4. Update the CMDB with the necessary changes and communicate them to stakeholders
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Also need to understand the features and functions supported by the CMDB. Playbook overview The four stages toward a healthy CMDB: Stage 1 – Set your direction Stage 2 – Build a team and a governance model Stage 3 – Design your configuration plan Stage 4 – Show your CMDB’s value to other organizations
Every successful CMDB deployment needs a detailed Configuration Management Plan. When you clearly identify your objectives and develop a comprehensive strategy for attaining and sustaining these capabilities, you lay the foundation for better business service health.
Using the ServiceNow CMDB dashboard, your stakeholders get status updates and track important changes. In this way, you’re able to share the health of the CMDB. Figure 4 depicts an example CMDB dashboard. You can use the CMDB health dashboard to manage the health of the CMDB and communicate it to business stakeholders.
Step 1: Set your direction Great configuration management starts with clear goals, actionable objectives, and measurable business outcomes. Write well-defined goals and objectives Companies with successful CMDB deployments always articulate what they want to accomplish.
Reduce your IT costs and improve service performance by gaining visibility into your environment with a well-configured CMDB. To do so, use Discovery to simplify populating your data and to make sure that it's current and reliable. Learn how to build a healthy CMDB process to improve service performance.