Populating CIs in CMDB
The CMDB functions as a decision making tool, impact and root cause analyzer when catered to the IT environment. But, by populating a large amount of data, your CMDB may turn complex, causing a loss in structure and information, making its analysis less effective.
So how can you build an efficient CMDB without turning it complex? AssetExplorer gives you a step-by-step process to identify and populate the CIs in your CMDB.
Steps to populate CIs in CMDB
To set up a less complicated CMDB design, strategize on your CI List and their supported attributes and relationships. Given below are 3 easy steps through which you can effectively populate CIs in your CMDB.
Step #1: Narrow down the CI List
The first step is to identify the business critical CIs as per your organizations environment and group them in appropriate CI Types. Each CI Type holds its own attributes and relationships that are defined with key stakeholders from the Service Catalog Management, Change Management and the likes.
Some of the entities that can contribute to your CI list are,
Business Service
Hardware ( IT and Non IT assets, components)
Software (which are installed in the server/workstation like applications, operating systems, database)
Department
Documents (license agreement, contract, lease agreement)
Users and Support Groups
Note: Softwares which are installed in the server/workstation with a CI Type are considered as CIs.
Step #2: Populating the Configuration Items
Once, the CI List is strategized and confirmed, you need to populate the Configuration Items. ManageEngine AssetExplorer gives you various ways through which you can effectively populate CIs into your CMDB.
Populating Workstation/Devices
Populating Users/Technicians
Importing from Active Directory (for Windows machine)
Populating other CIs such as IT services, Business Services, Department
Manual Addition of CIs
Note: Make sure that the CI information in your CMDB is updated from time-to-time.
Step #3: Creating the information model
The overall information model is complete only when the relationships between the CIs are defined. While populating Configuration Items using any of the methods in Step 2, the interdependencies between the CIs are identified and established. The relationships can be viewed from the Relationship Map which helps in impact and root cause analysis.