Building a CMDB You Can Trust in a Complex Environment

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1 WHITE PAPER Building a CMDB You Can Trust in a Complex Environment Move beyond standard data consolidation to a more pro-active approach with the Nexthink-ServiceNow CMDB Connector EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Forward-thinking service desk teams today are helping IT departments transform from simple cost centers to revenue and innovation centers. Two of the main drivers enabling this transformation are active monitoring and proactive support. But for many IT teams, as complexity continues to grow, seeing what s in their ever-changing environment is a struggle. Their IT infrastructure becomes difficult to control, maintain and improve. Organizations rely heavily on a structured CMDB to efficiently operate their IT infrastructure. What sets a Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB) apart from an ordinary asset database is the ability to understand dependency and usage relationships between Configuration Items (CIs). However, building and maintaining a reliable CMDB is no simple matter. Like any other important solution, it requires time and dedicated resources. In this white paper, we will examine the challenges, talk about the pitfalls and cover the importance of automation. We ll also reveal why populating the ServiceNow CMDB with real-time assets and configurations from the end-user perspective offers a game-changing approach. And finally, we ll showcase how to accomplish this with the Nexthink CMDB Connector and explain how IT teams are moving beyond standard data consolidation to a much more proactive and innovative approach to creating a source of truth everyone can trust. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CMDB FOR IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT An ever-changing and complex IT environment puts a lot of pressure on IT administrators. Between long-term change management and daily patch updates, IT teams live in a constant environment of change. Virtualization and dynamic provisioning have transformed IT into an on-demand service provider which must swiftly adapt to the actual consumption patterns of the end users. To manage this complex IT environment, IT administrators need to count on an accurate and up-to-date data source. Most organizations rely on a CMDB for their data source. The CMDB is the central database of IT Service Management (ITSM) and the Generic CMDB structure. foundation for a controlled IT system. All ITIL processes concerning incident, problem, change, service portfolio and financial management are dependent on current and accurate data from the CMDB. The CMDB is maintained by the configuration management process. The CMDB contains all relevant details of each configuration item (CI) and details the relationship between the CIs. A CI can either be physical, logical or conceptual, each with its own attributes that need to be maintained. CMDB offers a way to:

2 Keep track of IT assets and configurations Add new assets and maintain CIs Conduct effective root cause analysis Analyse the relationships and dependencies between different components Ensure stability for all your components and services Minimize IT risk with better understanding of the impacts LEVELS OF CMDB A fully functional CMDB will gather information at various levels of an organization: Level 1 Inventory Management: Asset tagging with location & other rudimentary information > data added manually or via AD Level 2 Asset Management: Inventory Management plus financial attributes and lifecycle tracking of the asset > data added manually or other sources Level 3 Service Asset & Configuration Management: Asset Management plus Tracking service and component at the relationship level > Data extracted from Nexthink via Discovery App HOW TO CREATE AND MAINTAIN A CMDB? Without question, building a CMDB can seem intimidating, and no one ever promised a CMDB would be easy to create or maintain. But without a well-managed CMDB, the rest of your service management strategy can fall short of expectations. Beyond creating the CMDB, managing it can also require significant effort to catalog and update objects inthe database. One can always move up in granularity but will be faced with unmanaged change resulting in loss of control. Managing the interdependencies between CIs is a significant undertaking. Often a CMDB project will start with a lot of enthusiasm and commitment with a dedicated project and respective resources. But historically this enthusiasm wanes over time. In the beginning, organizations find that the CMDB provides realistic and usable information but over time due to data quality issues primarily, confidence levels start to fall. Maintaining data quality in the CMDB is the toughest and most imperative factor underpinning its success. MOVE YOUR CMDB TO THE NEXT LEVEL With the Nexthink-ServiceNow integration, one will be able rely on a trusted CMDB. Put an end to missing or incomplete data leading to risky decisions, time-consuming data hunting and annoying cross checking. Anyone using ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB) can rely and work with a trusted and reliable CMDB by automatically synchronizing endpoint analytics and end-user feedback discovered by Nexthink in real-time at every device into the ServiceNow CMDB. Let s move to the next level

3 Interfacing with Nexthink Nexthink Nexthink CMDB Connector CMDB Nexthink-CMDB interface. Nexthink-ServiceNow CMDB Connector The main goal of the discovery app is the creation of a dataset that contains accurate CMDB data. It takes the information collected by Nexthink, identifies the CIs and transforms the data into the CMDB. By default, the application defines 5 CI types to be imported: Users Workstations Services Software Windows servers Nexthink CMDB integration enables users to: Import CIs: devices (servers and workstations), services, software and users from Nexthink to the ServiceNow CMDB. Import relationships between CIs in Nexthink to the ServiceNow CMDB. Selects which information for each CI will be imported to the ServiceNow CMDB. Visualizes statistics about import executions. Explores relationships between CIs using the ServiceNow interface. Support for multiple Nexthink Engines. The Nexthink-ServiceNow CMDB Connector s primary aim is to help ServiceNow users benefit from Nexthink data. Also, it allows users to synchronize CIs that companies manage through Nexthink with their ServiceNow instance. In addition, this integration allows ServiceNow users to browse linked information to computers, services, software and users. SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE OVERVIEW The subsystems that participate in the integration are: One or more instances of the Nexthink Engine with their Web API V2.0 available. A ServiceNow instance The Nexthink Engine stores and organizes the end-user data that a light-weight agent (Nexthink Collector) extracts from end devices.

4 Engine 1 Customer Web API ServiceNow Mid Server CMDB Engine n High level architecture. ADVANTAGE OF THE NEXTHINK-SERVICENOW CMDB CONNECTOR With an automated data source feeding into the CMDB, IT has a high data maturity at a much lower human (and financial cost). This access allows IT teams to harvest many benefits from this crucial data. We will break the benefits down into the individual ITIL processes and analyze the advantage with real use cases. Configuration & Asset Management While asset management and configuration management are related, these two areas have different goals. Asset management focuses on the financial tracking of company assets. Configuration management focuses on building and maintaining elements that create an available network of services. A host of benefits are gained by enabling Nexthink to populate CMDBs: Gain control over inventory: Discover if someone has access to unauthorized or non-compliant assets or services in your organization. Understand Relationships and Dependencies: Having CI relationships exposed through application mapping lets users see, understand and act, based on parent/ child asset relationships. (For example, knowing that there are 100 business users on a payroll system that depends on a server, allows better inventory planning and costs distribution.) Examples: Visibility Build a realistic picture of users, devices and consumed services with Nexthink data. Adoption/Usage Build customized reports with Nexthink and analyze software adoption/usage trends.

5 Screenshot - Visibility Report showing the list of end points which have installed the Helpdesk software. CHANGE & RELEASE MANAGEMENT Change management helps organizations understand and reduce the impact of change to the IT environment. A CMDB, helps IT teams by accurately visualizing the impact and alerting the concerned stakeholders of any change. With accurate data coming from Nexthink, change managers will gain substantial advantage with: Improved infrastructure integrity by checking on discrepancies between Nexthink data and manually entered data. This will facilitate the detection and correction of CI exceptions. (instances where the discovered CIs differ from previously known CIs) Control of assets through verification of CI records against the discovered infrastructure Improved planning as the status of the entire infrastructure is kept current. No unplanned changes are made and all changes to CIs (i.e. new assets and software deliveries) will be systematically by discovered and recorded in the CMDB. More accurate risk assessments as the relationships and dependencies between CIs are known. Change managers can use the CMDB as a well-documented and trusted audit trail of configuration changes over time to monitor compliance. Minimize unauthorized change, many incidents are due to failed or unauthorized changes. Release Management teams are responsible for the introduction of new CIs to the IT infrastructure. The objective of this process is to ensure and coordinate the production readiness and distribution of new elements introduced to the IT infrastructure. With an automated discovery process, CMDBs will be systematically updated with the latest information. Examples: Impact analysis of change Analyze the impact of a service outage on a CMDB for any given services with Nexthink s service usage information. Hardware refresh Using Nexthink s performance scores on end points, enables targeting hardware refresh priorities.

6 Win10 readiness With customized Win10 readiness scores for each device, actionable data is provided for migration support. CI discrepancies Build customized reports to discover unknown assets or assets which have not gone through the normal procurement process. Screenshot - Impact analysis of change We can see the usage pattern of the service, allowing us to better understand the service change or disruption. Screenshot - CMDB Discrepancies A ServiceNow report displaying computer CI which have been discovered by Nexthink. INCIDENT & PROBLEM MANAGEMENT A proactive approach to incident and problem management is an essential competence that allows an organization to be efficient and agile. This allows them to identify trends that help them uncover potential problems early and allow corrective action before problems occur. Intelligent analytics ensure the quality of business services and improve the end user s experience by providing IT with upto-date information on CIs which allows for quick understanding of the scope of the incident, including an impact analysis.

7 Reports can also be run to track CIs with the most amount of issues or highest impact CIs. Examples: Prioritizing and escalating Incidents With up-to-date data, IT can prioritize incidents by automatically and continuously determining the scope of impact. Incident Closure Nexthink data can be used to verify when an IT service is restored. Beyond Incident Management With end-user satisfaction, device performance and compliance scores, the Service Desk can proactively resolve issues even before an incident is logged. Proactive End-User experience improvement Correlate service management with end-user satisfaction by importing user experience scores and running custom reports. Screenshot - Proactive End-User Improvement report In this report, we can see each device with its corresponding user experience score. CONCLUSION Having an up-to-date CMDB that IT teams can rely on is critical in today s complex environment. A centralized and automated CMDB that is populated with current data and that shows the dependencies and relationships between CIs will allow your IT administration to: Increase efficiency: Automatic CMDB population removes unnecessary manual effort and re-work. Gain better understanding: Greater insight into the services consumed. Improve visibility: Closely follow planned/unplanned changes on IT infrastructure. React faster: Trust data quality and quickly react to a given situation. No more cross/double checks. What it shows is what it is. Gain a higher ROI: Implement more IT processes using new data populated by Nexthink. Increase control: Implement internal controls and provide insight about the impact of change.

8 LEARN MORE Join our ever-growing list of customers who have created a modern-day CMDB using the Nexthink-ServiceNow Connector. With less than a day s configuration of your ServiceNow environment. You will immediately benefit with greater visibility of your IT environment and its usage. Ready to learn more? info@nexthink.com Nexthink and the Nexthink logo are trademarks of Nexthink S.A. Copyright 2017 Nexthink S.A. All rights reserved