CMDB: virtual appliances onboarding & maintenance process

[Allen_Deepak]

Hello All, I'm wondering what will be the best process for virtual appliances in CMDB. The virtual appliances like IP routers, firewalls, etc,.. are being discovered in CMDB which creates the VM instance record and the hardware applaince record which is great. But there are few types of applainces not yet discovered and requires manual maintenance process. What is the best process to follow for these types? Please share your ideas.

Thanks,

Shilpa

[pratiksha5]

What are those devices?

[Ashok Sasidhara · Accepted solution]

Following are some of the key points to be considered for manual data population & maintenance in the CMDB:

1. For each CI class, review the identification rules to make sure that the identifier entries align with the unique attributes in your data sources

2. If any of these appliances which are not discovered belong to any CI classes which are also populated by other methods like discovery & 3rd party integrations, make sure to update the reconciliation rules to define the priority for manual data import, discovery, integrations etc.

3. For manual data import, make use of 'Integration hub ETL' (as it will go through the identification and reconciliation engine)

4. Use data certification for periodic reviews (by respective CI class owners or their team members) of important attributes which are populated manually

5. Make sure to update the CMDB process document with important information like list of CI classes ad attributes, CI class owners, data certification frequency and task assignees, data population methods used for each class, overview of the data maintenance process etc.