Assets to be included in CMDB.

[Loto-qc]

While assets such as mouse, keyboards, etc; i.e. consumables that are not included in the CMDB, 1) are monitors considered as consumables also?  2) Do you track consumables within the Asset Mgt DB?  3) For Personal Computers (Laptops, desktops, tablets, etc...) while they are included in the Asset Mgt DB, do you also treat them as a CI in the CMDB?  Thanks in advance for your responses!  🙂

[CMDB Whisperer · Accepted solution]

Whether or not they are part of a system, their configuration is still important and in the broadest sense they are still part of the serviceability of your overall infrastructure.  It's true that you probably won't be doing problems or changes on them, although your users may still report incidents related to the computers.  Put simply, they are still relevant for hardware and software support technical services, so they are still important CIs to track.  And as @Jimmers rightly points out, their configuration has impacts on your security, so they are very relevant.  Although I can see the argument you make, the bottom line is that for you to effectively manage your end-user computers you need to manage them from a configuration management perspective as well, not just asset management.  I do not see this as optional activity.  Even though a lot of people incorrectly think about "asset management" as somehow synonymous with end-point configuration management, they are not the same.  Your end-user computers are a critical component of your IT infrastructure, even if their scope of impact is mostly on an individual user level.

[CMDB Whisperer]

Whether monitors are considered as consumables, or assets, or peripheral CIs, will depend on the customer preference and policies.  There is no single right answer.   

In my experience consumables are often not considered worth the effort to customers unless they have a lot of employees consuming high demand items that are distributed across multiple sites and stockrooms, and those items need to be maintained at certain stock levels to meet demand.

As for Computers, these should typically be managed as both assets and CIs. as they represent a significant financial investment, and are also a primary focus for endpoint configuration management, service desk incidents/requests, and security processes.

[Loto-qc]

Thanks for you response!  For Computers though, if they don't have impacts on other systems, applications, etc, meaning impacting a single user, isn't it enough to have them only in the Asset DB and work IPC from Asset Mgt and not from CMDB?

[Jimmers]

Loto-qc,

You might want to factor in your long-term goals for the platform. For example, if you are planning on adopting Vulnerability Response/Remediation on Computers, a CI would be needed.

[Loto-qc]

Thanks, I had not thought of this before...  🙂