Building Blocks for Your CMDB

Joshua Schuller
ISM Practice Senior Architect
Unisys Corporation
Building Blocks for Your CMDB

© 2012 WWRUG Canada Inc. All Rights Reserved 2
Objectives and Results
Objective
- In this session we are discussing implementation considerations when
deploying ADDM discovery with the CMDB and ITSM.
Results
- Fully populated CMDB that is operational with the other ITSM modules
Skills developed
- ADDM Integration
- CMDB Administration
- Performance Tuning

Enriching your CMDB data
Automated population of the CMDB
Straightening out the Product Catalog with Normalization
Reconciliation tips and performance tuning
Benefits now that we’re done
Agenda

Data Enrichment – Two Types
• Any data from a non-integrated source
• Manual input or “one-off” bulk load
• Examples include Cost Centers, Contracts,
Used By Relationships, Sites, etc
User Managed
Data
• Examples include ADDM, BBCA,
SCCM/Seamless Data Pump
• Could be agent-less or agent-based
• Data derived from scanning
Electronically
Discovered
Data

Data Enrichment
User Managed Data
- Finding the balance between too much or not enough
- Appropriate for KEY pieces of data like Status, Work Info
- Will always be a need for some kind of bulk loading capability
- Consider a procedure to import a User Managed Data template
spreadsheet into a Staging Dataset with a Reconciliation Job
- Additional data load tools may help (e.g. Atrium Integrator or
Effective Technologies Transport)

Data Enrichment
Electronically Discovered Data
- Automation is preferred (obviously)
- Default ADDM CMDB mapping is a good start
- ADDM mappings accomplished via TPL (“The Pattern
Language”) formatted files that can easily be extended
- Additionally, ADDM 8.3 contains new features for
Collaborative Application Mapping

Collaborative Application Mapping (CAM)
What is Collaborative Application Mapping?
- A workflow process that enriches discovered data by rolling it
up into higher level Business Applications
- A set of ADDM features which support the creation of Dynamic
and Durable Application Models (Derived Application Data)
CAM enriches the discovered data within ADDM for a
more complete CMDB and ITSM integration

Prototype
• Search Datastore
• Decide on Tiers
• Create Groups /
Subgroups
• Create Notes
Share
• Generate PDF Report
• Request App Owner feedback
Provide Seed Data
• Name of Application
• Affiliated Hostnames
• Database Instance
• Process Usernames
ADDM Admin
does this 2
Application Owner
does this 1
ADDM Admin
does this 3

Gather Seed Data (what is required?)
- Application Name
- Basic breakdown of tiers
- Hostnames involved (for datastore searches only, we will avoid
hardcoding any hostname into the model)
- JMX or J2EE application names
- Location of DB config file, DB instance names
- Any service or j2ee domain names
- Process usernames

Build the Prototype
- Search the ADDM datastore using the seed data
- Think about the discovered technologies in terms of tiers
- Create groups/subgroups (aka the scratch pad or workspace)
- Add notes into the model with any questions for the
Application Owner
- Create the Prototype PDF report with notes and visualizations
- Email the report to the Application Owner for feedback and
review

Collaborate!
- Create the Prototype PDF report with notes and visualizations
- Email the report to the Application Owner for feedback and
review
- Application Owner reviews and provides feedback on the notes
Application Owner input is used to refine the Model
Wash, Rinse, Repeat.. the CAM process

Agenda

Discovery to CMDB/Asset without Normalization Overview
Reconciliation
Engine
Normalization
Engine
Product
Categorization
Product
Catalog
BMC Atrium CMDB
BMC Remedy ITSM
Discovery Tool
Asset Management
BMC.Asset
Dataset
Asset ClassesImport
Dataset
No product catalog entries are
reviewed or created.
No product categorization is
created.
Data comes in from the
discovery source.
1 The data is reconciled to
existing data and goes into the
Production Dataset.
2

Discovery to CMDB/Asset with Normalization Overview
Import
Dataset
Reconciliation
Engine
Normalization
Engine
Product
Categorization
Product
Catalog
BMC Atrium CMDB
BMC Remedy ITSM
Discovery Tool
Asset Management
BMC.Asset
Dataset
Asset Classes
Data comes in from the
discovery source. 1
Normalization follows rules
defined to update the
categorization, product name
and manufacturer name.
2
The data is reconciled to
existing data and goes in to the
CMDB as visible from ITSM.
5
If the dataset is ‘trusted’, product catalog
records will be added for the company.
3
If product catalog records are added for the company,
corresponding Product Categorization is added
4

Normalization Alias

Product Catalog

Reconciliation Flow
Merge
Import
Dataset
BMC.Asset
Dataset
Identify
Using defined rules
(queries) look in the
BMC.Asset dataset and
see if a match is found to a
record in the Import
dataset. If found, set the
reconciliation ID, else
create a new recon ID.
1
If a new record, create it.
If an existing record,
update it base on
precedence rules.
2

Identification Activity Example
Identification Rules for Computer Class Sequence
'‘ADDM_IntegrationID' = $ADDM_IntegrationID$ 10
'Domain' = $Domain$ AND 'HostName' = $HostName$ AND
'SerialNumber' = $SerialNumber$
20
'SerialNumber' = $SerialNumber$ 30
IMPORT DATASET
TokenID =
Domain = company.com
HostName = Liberty
Serial Number = 12345
Recon ID
BMC.ASSET DATASET
ADDM_IntegrationID =
HostName = Freedom
Recon ID = 7890
1
IMPORT DATASET
ADDM_IntegrationID =
HostName = Liberty
Recon ID = 7890

Merge Example
IMPORT DATASET
TokenID =
HostName = Liberty
Recon ID = 7890
BMC.ASSET DATASET
TokenID =
HostName = Freedom
Recon ID = 7890
2
BMC.ASSET DATASET
TokenID =
HostName = Liberty
Recon ID = 7890
Precedence Rules
BMC.ASSET 10
IMPORT 100
IMPORT2 50

Reconciliation tips and Performance Tuning
Agenda

Which Application Performance Monitoring tools are available in
your environment?
- Perfmon, top
- Service Availability monitoring (e.g. BEM, Nagios)
- End User Experience Mgmt, Deep App Tier Visibility/Tracing
Establish a Performance Baseline
- What do the AR and DB utilization look like during normal operation?
- How long does it take to execute the Identification and Merge activities?
- How long to run the ADDM CMDB Sync?
- What is the Transaction Size? How many CI’s?
Performance Tuning
23

Performance Tuning – A Real Example
DB utilization
during the
Identification
Activity
- Test 1 is the
baseline
- Test 2 is post
indexing
- Test 3 is post
index tuning
24

Performance Tuning – Indexing
Adding just a few
indexes showed
immediate gains
- Reconciliation
execution times
- Overall system
performance
- End user experience
25

In this example we will look at the ADDM transaction
performance from a Connectivity perspective
- What happens “on the wire”
Similar questions
- What other APM tools are available to help
- How long does it take to run a CMDB Sync
- What does CMDB Sync look like for a single host
Performance Tuning – ADDM to CMDB Synchronization
26

Wireshark capture
of a single host
CMDB Sync
Summary of Delays
- Total response time
of 70.8 seconds
- 41.2 seconds spent
in the CMDB
- 1.9 MB of
application data
transferred

Application Turns
- Application Turn is a
change in direction of the
conversation
Application turns can be
significant
- Each turn incurs a
network delay
- Magnify network latency
- Increase application
response time
431 turns for a single CI!!

Also many Out of
Sequence Packets
This can indicate
- Many retransmissions
- Heavy congestion
- Error prone link
- Network Problem…

Agenda

Enhanced Integration
- Automatically derived data is populated into the CMDB
- The whole is more than the sum of parts
Increased Usability
- Fully populated data models lead to a richer user experience
- ITSM requests can be easily related to discovered Computer Systems,
Software Instances, etc.
Performance
- Negative performance can be dramatic in multiple areas
- Value diminishes quickly if user experience impacted
Builds a foundation to map Applications to Services

Questions?

Wrap-up
Contact Information

Building Blocks for Your CMDB

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Building Blocks for Your CMDB

Similar to Building Blocks for Your CMDB (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Building Blocks for Your CMDB

Editor's Notes