Can mouses or keyboards be recognized by Discovery as CIs?

[jleon]

Hello

Is needed to track some devices as keyboards or mouse as CI assigned for computers. we already have working Discovery, the computers are classified as CI in the CMDB, my question is:

Exists any way to track the devices like mouses or keyboards as configuration items in the CMDB and those be related to their belonging Computer CI?

thanks!

Jesus

[Patrick DeCarl1]

Jesus,

I would ask why you tracking them in the first place.     For USB devices, its hard to write custom probe to get information since the devices are not connected to the same USB port.

[Uncle Rob · Accepted solution]

They aren't CI's.   What on earth could you change on a Mouse or a Keyboard that would necessitate Change control?

Now you're going to put thousands more items worth of management overhead into the system?   A real CMDB requires that the CI's meet completeness, correctness, and compliance standards... which takes real labor to execute, which is why so many CMDB initiatives catastrophically fail (treating Discovery as the design and scope of the CMDB).

What properties of a mouse matter to the organization?

What properties of a keyboard matter to the organization?
When has the *configuration* of a mouse or keyboard ever adversely effected a service?

Has any organization you've seen *EVER* done an audit comparing actual to authorized states of a mouse or KB?

I'm going to be humongous d-bag about this and say whomever is asking you to integrate this into the CMDB has absolutely no business being near a CMDB.

[Uncle Rob]

There's also a massive question on business value here.

You ask me to discover servers and versions, and I'll go to the board of a company and tell them I can reduce their security risk.   BUSINESS value.

What higher order value does the business get for the time expense of discovering and managing thousands of mice and keyboards?   Its certainly not asset management as finance would never class those as anything other than office supplies.