Service configuration management
Using this practice, the organization will be able to have a clear understanding of the configuration of components for service and related CIs and also the relationship between them as this information is needed.
Configuration Item: Any component that needs to be managed during making a service deliverable.
The main activity in this practice is collecting and managing information about CIs that could be hardware, software, network, buildings, human resources, suppliers, and documents. Service is also a CI. In this practice, we try to understand how many CIs are related to each other to run a service. This diagram below shows a sample of relations of CIs to a service. These views are known as services map or services model and declare the architecture of service.
Figure 5.29
There are some important considerations in this practice, the organization should note that collecting extra information for the services that are not worthy might expense the budget for a low value-oriented subject. So, there should be a balance between the amount of effort spent on such information and the value of services. This practice will affect other practice in a way to make them work simpler and more effective regarding the usefulness of information that can be produced by it.
Configuration management system (CMS): A set of tools, data, and information that are used to support service configuration management practice.
Generally, there is a database called a configuration management database (CMDB) that holds the data related to configurations. Some tools are used to record, maintain, and view the data and there should be a connection between incident management tools, etc and CMDB in order to support those practices using information included in this database.
This practice needs some activities to make it successful:
- New CI recognition and adding them to CMS
- Updating configurations data when a change occurs
- Verifying configuration records
- Auditing to identify unrecognized CIs
Figure 5.30