Configuration Items (CI) Process Overview

The process of managing configuration items in CCMDB involves several components.

Discovery

You use the TADDM discovery tool to find configuration items as they exist in your IT infrastructure.

You use settings in the discovery tool to specify the types of configuration items (such as computers, systems, routers, switches, and so forth) to search for. The discovered configuration items reside in the discovery tool database, including CI types.

Importing Discovered Data for Configuration Management and Change Control

You use Integration Composer and the IBM Tivoli Integration Adapter for TADDM to import data from TADDM. You import the data in two stages.

Stage 1

You import CI types as classifications, including their attributes and relationships, and the relationship rules between various CI types. You can view the classifications and attributes in the Classifications application. You can view relationships and relationship rules in the Relationships application. You can view the list of CI types in the CI Types application.

You might want to manage only a subset of the configuration items that the discovery tool finds. In the CI Types application you select the CI types that you want to manage under configuration management and change control. The import process in Stage 2 imports only the configuration item instances for the CI types you select.

Stage 2

You import configuration item instances into the Actual Configuration Items application. The import brings only the configuration items associated with the CI types you selected in the CI Types application. Selecting CI types is a means of filtering the data. The import also brings the relationships that exist between the various configuration items.

The configuration items that were discovered and imported are called "actual CIs", because they represent the actual state of the CI at the time of discovery.

Creating Authorized CIs From Actual CIs

Configuration management and change control processes do not operate on actual CIs. Instead, they operate on “authorized” CIs, referred to simply as "CIs." These “authorized” CIs represent the authorized state and sometimes the desired state of a CI. The distinction between the actual state of a CI and the authorized state of a CI is predominantly used in auditing CIs and performing necessary remediation, if required.

You view "authorized" CIs (or just "CIs") in the Configuration Items application.  

You can create CIs individually, based on an Actual CI record. Because not all CIs are discoverable, you might create some CIs that do not have an actual CI state.

Some CI types, such as computer systems, can have other CI types related to them, such as operating systems, file systems, and so forth. These related CI types can in turn have other CI types related to them. They form actual CI hierarchies. Even though you filtered the imported data using CI types, you might not want all the CI types related to computer systems, for example, to be under configuration management and change control. Therefore, before you create authorized CIs from actual CIs, you can use the Manage CI Hierarchies dialog box in the Classifications application to define the CI hierarchy that you want to manage for a given actual CI hierarchy. Refer to the Classifications application help for detailed information on creating classifications and managing CI hierarchies.

After you define the hierarchy you want to manage, then, from the Actual Configuration Items application, you can create an authorized CI from an actual CI by specifying the appropriate CI hierarchy. The system creates authorized CIs for the actual CI you specified, and for the children of the actual CI, according to what you defined in the Manage CI Hierarchies dialog box.