Configuration Management Software Brick

Configuration Management is the documentation and management of the technical elements and relationships in the IT infrastructure, application and business process components. This discipline is an underpinning of problem, change and availability management. Configuration Management provides an understanding of how applications, business processes and IT elements relate, so that the impact or resolution priority of a change or problem (e.g., outage) can be determined. Which component relationships are tracked and how the information is used depend on thetask required:

• Client configuration management tools focus on configuring and deploying operating system, patches and applications to client devices.
• Server configuration management tools focus on configuring and deploying operating system, patches, applications and content to servers.
• Network configuration management tools focus on documenting configuration files, auditing changes and deploying updates to network devices.
• IT service configuration management tools focus on discovering and documenting the relationships among the components that comprise an IT service — from end-user devices to servers, networks, storage, applications and data. These tools are prerequisites for achieving success with service-level, change, problem, availability and performance management.

This brick has captured many types of configuration management tools in the baseline environment. In the next iteration of the architecture, the following sub-categories of this brick will be created: client, server, network, business intelligence and IT service configuration management. Once the ESM implementation efforts refine the list of technology elements that must be managed, the strategic and tactical directions for each type of configuration management tool will be revisited.

• Additional strategic tools will be determined after elements to be monitored are defined in the ESM process design and implementation efforts.
• Tools were designated as Containment because there was no evidence from current deployments to consider those products as superior alternatives to the products that were designated Tactical and Strategic.
• Tactical and strategic products were selected to leverage NIH's investment in products that are a proven fit for NIH's known future needs. Leveraging baseline products in the future will minimize the operations, maintenance, support and training costs of new products.
• Some baseline products have been designated retirement and containment. These products are either not as widely or successfully deployed at NIH, or they do not provide as much functionality, value, or Total Cost of Ownership as the selected tactical and strategic products.