Managing change across all the servers and network devices requires the following activities:
Change tracking: Who is responsible for change? When did the change take place? What has changed?
Change fixing: Fixing the changed parameters, files etc.
Change auditing: Documenting and examining change helps over a period of time to possibly determine the stability of the system?
Configuration management is one of the key matter of concern for big companies. Change in configuration data of an application, operating system etc is creating lot of grief to entire system. This leads to loss of revenue in one way or the other.
Thus, a change and configuration management product must have a system of managing change upto the depth of configuration parameter of a file.
SOX compliance regulations Vis-a-vis change and configuration management
Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance like other compliance regulations requires a company, some kind of process to manage IT infrastructure, either manually or in automated manner. The ideal process for meeting compliance regulations posed by SOX is through process automation. With SOX compliance, companies would no longer be able to go ahead by managing IT infrastructure in ad-hoc manner.
An automated and effective change and configuration management software must have features which could deliver all the requirements posed by SOX compliance. Following are requirements (SOX Section 404) vs features to be present in such product managing change and configuration:
Company-level control including corporate governance, enterprise policies, and information sharing: The change management product should provide answers to all of the following:
Who is owner of what IT infrastructure?
Who is responsible for change?
Who could change the configuration?
How many change has occured?
Are all best practices met?
Application control for ERP/financial systems and other specialized applications covering areas such as validation, accuracy, authorization etc: The configuration change management product should be able to do the following:
Are all softwares up-to-date?
Have any licences expired?
What IT infrastructure do I have?
Are best practices enforced and met?
IT general control: The change, configuration management software must be able to provide following features:
How many change have occured over last scheduled time?
Knowledge of controlled access of computer programs?
What configuration must not be subjected to change?
Change detection and Rule compliance for managing Configuration
Before you boil down to a product managing change and configuration, note down the following two points:
That change detection is a key feature.
That the rule compliance, rule enforcement is the key feature.
Both the above features are very essential to managing configuration of any distributed applicat ion. Automation is one thing that you should also watch out for. If you get the change tracking and rule enforcement done without much intervention, nothing like managing configuration in automated manner.
Wireless network security & SOX/HIPPA & Change and configuration management!
Companies using wireless network could no more afford to take the wireless network infrastructure configuration management, the easy way. Why? Very simple. It is the compliance regulations such as SOX, HIPPA posed on such companies which would force them to give top attention to wireless network security and the associated strategy related to managing of change and configuration data.
Any and every change in wireless-enabled application's configuration needs to be carefully monitored and acounted for. And all kinds of change should be properly audited by concerned IT staff before allowing the change of any type in any configuration to be accepted universally.
SOX stands for Sarbanes-Oxley Act and HIPPA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
Simply speaking, companies using wireless-enabled applications would definitely need a product to track change and configuration. Failing to meet compliance regulations posed by SOX and HIPPA could pose stiff and legal penalties on these companies. These company would have to definitely look out for a vendor offering software based on change and configuration management.
Following are the most important points that a company would like to take care of:
All user devices must be tested and certified by the IT staff prior to being connected to the wireless network. This demands the change management software to track and record any change made in any device. Change detection is the key.
All wireless-enabled applications must pass security and performance requirements prior to being deployed. This requires the change and configuration management product to manage all the change in important configuration parameters/data related to the application.
All wireless-enabled applications must have a designated owner. The product must track the owner through auditing reports. Thus, any software claiming to manage change and configuration data should and must provide nice reports.
Big brothers such as CA, IBM, HP are waiting and watching in order to acquire a product related to change and configuration management. This is so surprising to see that there are no acquisitions in this space. And, one thing is sure that big brothers won't be interested in reinventing the wheel. They are waiting for market leader to emerge. So, they would definitely acquire one of the leaders in products dealing with managing of change and configuration of the system. Only time would tell who would be acquired by whom?
Following are three companies who has just entered in some kind of partnership relationship with IBM Tivoli:
Cendura Corp. (Cohesion)
Relicore Inc. (Clarity)
Collation Corp. (Confignia)
Is IBM targetting one of the above companies for acquisition of products related to managing change and configuration? God knows! And, how about Computer Associates and HP? But, big brothers would absolutely do everything to eat big chunk of cake having top layer cream of change and configuration :) and be a leader in the space related to managing of of change ;and configuration. Lets wait and watch the market space dealing with change and configuration product!
BMC Remedy delivers Change and configuration management(CCM) solution to manage change and control on IT infrastructure. The CCM solutions acheives the management of following recommended by ITIL standards for ITSM:
Change Detection
Release
Configuration
The CCM solution does the following tasks:
Identify - Discover the IT environment
Respond - to the needs of changing business and IT requirements.
Control - Enforce the rules to control all business critical configurations in the IT environment.
Cendura corp, one of the leaders in change and configuration management landscape releases Cohesion version 3.5 last month. Cendura claims to have product dealing change, control and compliance. One of the most attractive features of Cohesion 3.5 release is support for enterprise application software such as Oracle Financials, PeopleSoft, SAP R/3 And Siebel. This would help IT organizations to manage their enterprise applications in a better manner. With support for EAS, the IT organizations can now manage the following:
Discovery
Rule compliance
Change detection
Configuration
Auditing using reports
Dependency visualization mapping
All of the above features are available with Cohesion 3.5 version. Also included are features such as following:
Agentless application discovery
Imporved business alignment
Reporting by association of business attributes
Change detection dashboards
Import and export capabilities
Cohesion basically deals with change detection. It uses change detection for control and troubleshooting. It manages configuration for softwares and hardwares and helps in troubleshooting if somebody change one of the configuration parameters. Let us see how Cohesion 3.5 performs as change and configuration management product in the market? Best of luck!:)
Do you belong to the team asked to evaluate a couple of product claiming to manage change and configuration? Befor e deciding on one of these configuration management product, ensure that you have checked at least all of the following:
Install and play around with it to understand the value that would be added to your business.
Check the related security issues. Is it agent-less or agent-based product? Understand the cost and time involved in deploying the product in the data centre.
Select agentless one if you do not want it to be intrusive. However, if you want deep knowledge about your environment, you could as well go for agent-based.
Ensure that it is vendor independent. It should also provide you with the flexibility in managing softwares, hardwares and networking devices.
Check if configuration management is provided for a wide scope of configurations.
Check if rule compliance engine is provided using which you could enforce rules on certain important configuration parameters.
Check if the reporting infrastructure is provided using which you could do the audit of IT infrastructure. Periodic auditing of configuration parameters should be possible.
Check the intuitive nature and has well defined work-flow.
Check if the change detection engine is provided. Change of configuration parameters over a period of time should be detected and recorded.
Change and configuration management getting hot with IBM announcements
IBM, on May 16th, announced its foray in Change and configuration management database (CCMDB) landscape. They detailed their plans on three new Tivoli systems management products, and also the Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB), which federates IT information across multiple databases -- allowing IT administrators to track a single application running on a dozen servers. The new IBM Tivoli Process Managers includes modules related to management of following:
Change and Release
Availability
Information Lifecycle
Competition is tough as some of the big companies like Hewlett-Packard Co., Computer Associates International Inc. said that they also have federated databases for consolidating IT information, basically relating to change and configuration.
IBM also announced several business partners along with whom it would be working to come up with what they call as "Discovery Library". Those business partners are following:
Only time would tell who would be winner in Change and configuration management landscape. For detailed information on IBM announcements, visit the following link: IBM Adds New Choice on Configuration DBs
Change and configuration management - Discovery of IT Infrastructure
Discovery of IT infrastructure (hardwares/softwares) forms the key part of any change and configuration management strategy. The question to which many big companies having datacenters are puzzled about is "What do I have?" as part of IT infrastructure. What kind of change detection policy I need to have? What kind configuration data I want to manage? What would be policy related to change detection and configuration management?
In such a complex environment, it is very difficult to correctly manage the change and configuration information about all the softwares and hardwares that the companies have. And, even if these companies somehow accomplish to manage information related to change detection and configuration throug h manual processes, it is very difficult to then manage the patches, the licenses on ongoing basis etc. The implication of making mistakes at this point might cost million of dollars to these companies. They could have saved a chunk from this million dollars by having a reliable strategy for detecting changes taking place in complex environment and managing configuration for softwares and hardwares.
Large companies end up buying licenses every year without knowing if they are going to use it. They spend lot of time to confirm that they have the latest patch installed on their systems.
There comes the need of having accurate knowledge of IT infrastructure from time-to-time without errors and failures. And, this need gives birth to the Discovery of IT infrastructure. Any tool related to detecting change across softwares and hardwares and managing configuration would be incomplete if it does not provide users to know about their IT infrastructure from time-to-time.
So, if you form the part of evaluation team for evaluating any tool related to managing change and configuration, do not forget to check if the tool provides the auto discovery feature. Some of the points to look out when you are evaluating auto-discovery feature are following:
Agent-less discovery:Agent-less discovery allows one to quickly do a network scan and know about the hardware infrastructures mainly. It might not however provide in-depth configuration information.
Agent-based discovery: Agent-based discovery requires one to put agent on each of the machines to know the configuration in depth for software/hardwares.
Change and configuration management - Rule Compliance
Rule compliance forms one of the most important part of the change and configuration management paradigm.
Every company is enforcing certain strict rules related to security, performance, administration on their hardware/software IT infrastructure. In doing so, these companies need to check whethar the rules are broken from time-to-time manually or most often using some scripts.
This sounds a very cumbersome process and not at all reliable and scalable. There are always chances of human related error that could cost the company big chunk of money in one way or the other.
Thus, there is a need of a rule engine which would run the rules on timely basis and provide the concerned authorities with accurate information. This rule engine would form the most important part of any change and configuration management tool.
If you are evaulating a change and configuration management tool, don't forget to carefully look at its rules engine.
Configuresoft is actively working in change and configuration management landscape. It is promoting following tow products:
Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM): ECM is CMDB based technology. It offers management of configuration settings of windows based server and clients with its focus on security and IT standards. ECM also helps in Rule compliance, audits of IT infrastructure and much more. It is striving to deliver software for ITIL, SOX compliance. Some of the companies using ConfigureSoft ECM are Qwest, Clifford Chance etc. Read more about theie case studies.
Security Update Manager (SUM): SUM is aimed to automate security patch management across the enterprise. It helps install the security update patches on many systems with just one click. Not many customes are found to be using ConfigureSoft SUM. However, it is a very promising software.
ConfigureSoft ECM and SUM is aimed to acheive Change and Configuration management demand of an enterprise.
Change and Configuration management - Important part of ITIL
Change and configuration management should be aimed to acheived following objectives:
Account for all the IT assests and configurations within the organization and its services
Provide knowledge repository on configurations and their documentation
Provide a road mapfor IT service management such as incident management, problem management, change management, and release management
Verify and comply the configuration items(CI) against the infrastructure
Information on change and configuration management is centrally managed in a persistent storage. It is also called as Configuration management database(CMDB).
Configuration management database (CMDB) has following components:
Physical CI: Server, switch, application, database, documents etc.
Logical CI: IT services, systems, baseline records etc.
CI attributes: CPU speed, version, patches, serial number etc.
CI relationships: Parent-child, hosts relationships etc.
Change and configuration management forms key to ITIL. Lets see what is ITIL all about?
ITIL stands for IT Infrastructure Library. Today, world has become aware about managing IT infrastructure. ITIL is becoming widely accepted approach in IT Service management. Hundreds of companies have already started adopting ITIL processes.
ITIL is a set of best practises aimed to achieve quality IT service management. IT service management is management of IT systems and infratsructure to accomplish quality IT services delivery.ITIL has attracted attention of IT service providers, CIOs, directors and managers.
ITIL is aimed to enable a company achieve following:
Reduced costs
Enhanced IT services by the use of best practises
Enhanced use of skills and experience across the organisation
Improved standards
Improved productivity
Enhanced availability and performance of IT services
ITIL enhances quality of service delivery and support services by doing Change and configuration management.
Change and configuration management includes following:
Problem detection, quick troubleshooting
Release management
Production environment management
Development management
Availability and performance management
Security management
To acheive all of the above related to ITIL, an automated software is must; a software that specializes in change and configuration management.
And when the names have to be taken of those cool vendors, they are the following:
Change and configuration management solutions are all about automation of day-to-day management of software such as operating systems, various applications, patches, licenses, configuration settings. Process of managing a software applications could include the following:
Discovery
Deployment
Ongoing management
Upgrade management
Migration management
Asset management
Reporting
Rule compliance such as HIPPA, ITIL, SOX compliance
Change and configuration management solutions could be of following type:
Host change and configuration management
Server change and configuration management
Network devices change and configuration management
One such change and configuration management solution is HP OpenView. Read more about HP OpenView.
Relicore corp - Change and configuration management
In change and configuration management, Relicore is one company that is a promising company. Other major competitors are Cendura, Collation, Configuresoft. These are few companies who are fighting out for a place in the multi billion dollar market for IT management. Visit Relicore right away!
Relicore is an IT service configuration management company. They are promising to provide following features:
Automated discovery and change tracking: This feature would help user to automatically discover the applications on a host machine, thereby managing them in form of tracking the changes happening over a period of time. Server dependency mapping: Discovery and management of applications on host machines leads to understanding the dependency between these applications. One shall be able to know the incoming and outgoing links between each machine, and links between applications on/across the machine. Enterprise scalability and integration: Enables the scalability of enterprise applications by proper management. Reports: Provides reports on inventories etc.
Only time will tell how Relicore performs in change and configuration management landscape.
Host management - Key to Change and configuration management
Change and configuration management starts with Host management. What got changed on my host machine? This is a troublesome task in today's IT arena where large companies are managing 1000+ servers. It is so very time consuming and companies are ending up lots of money on maintaining their Host machines at gold standard configuration. Let us take a small example:
You have got a new linux box where you need to install following to start with:
Linux operating system Apache
You got linux installed. Perfect install! And, then got your Apache installed. Perfect configuration. And got a person to monitor! Perfect arrangement! But this perfect set up is fragile. The person got sick for one month, god forbids. And there is assigned another person to manage. He is a smart guy but got to office one fine evening with a couple of bottle of beers poured below his neckline. TGIF! He accidently changed certain configurations. Next morning is a holiday, saturday. some sincere guys wanted to work from home. However, things are broken. O boy! They waited for three days as the new person took entire monday to figure what he changed on Friday evening.
Is not that waste of time, waste of resources for nothing? Why not have a constant watch dog on this linux box? Why not have a change and configuration management tool to manage these pieces of software?
Change and configuration managment starts with Host management!
Reliable change and configuration management is going to be problem of the near future. So, sooner companies start taking a look at their configuration management strategy, better placed are they to manage their support/maintenance workforce, stress, and money above all related with configuration management problem.
Is this really hard to do? I believe no. Yes, it would have looked a wild and vague idea a couple of years before, but a responsible company could just not afford to ignore the problem of configuration management. This problem would sooner become a monster one as we are really forced to increase our IT infrastructure due to effectiveness in managing increased customer demands.
IT management is mostly about managing configuration, configuration of PC boxes, i.e.e, Host.
Host management is something that one would want to start thinking about when planning for change and configuration management. Host management is managing host consisting of operating systems, and various software applications. So, I believe Host management would start with managing operating systems and then moving to managing software applications such as databases, application servers, web servers, enterprise applications etc. Large companies have already started evaluating companies working on change and configuration management tool.
Cendura corporation vs Troux technologies Vs Rellicore Vs Collation
IT management is the most talked about topic in IT community. Every other company is looking out for some solution that would help them manage their IT infrastructure. I found that there are some of the major start-up companies that are fighting in IT management space. They are following:
When the question is about managing what? I would say, manage complex distributed application with instances running on 1000 machines! Is that easy? Absolutely Not! But this problem would eventually get solved soon! There is so much to manage in a software application. They are following:
Manage all the important files (exe, dlls etc etc)
Manage documentation
Manage configuration files particularly
Manage databases
So what would we do by managing them? How would we manage them?...
Today, when there is so much focus on managing complex distributed applications, the question that arises is what to control? Say, you have oracle database instance running on say 100 machines. And some mirror website went down because of oracle instance going down? So, this demands management of oracle database on all the machines. But, then if you manage oracle database instance, what about managing apache server instances. What if it was discovered that website went down because the server configuration setting was changed? So, we come down to managing/controlling apache server and oracle database instances on all the 100 machines. But how do we do? That is the biggest question mark in current computer world? Is there some solution to it? I would say NO! But are people working to find out the solution? I would say YES. Soon, there would be a market leader in this area.
Looks like somebody changed configuration settings!
After troubleshooting for some hours, the technical person found that somebody has played around with configuration settings of one of the file sometime yesterday. That led to the crash of website. But who changed? At what time it was changed? Why changed? And who would be accounted for loss of users + money? The "somebody" or the technical management. Why is not there a solid control on the software infrastructure?
Did you ever came across some website that gave the sorry message for being down? Did you know that if yahoo goes down for one day, how much are they going to loose in terms of money and credibility from user? Thats just a tremendous value. What is amazon goes down for 4 hours? Do you know how much sale are they going to loose?
So what should they do to keep the downtime really low? What should they do to troubleshoot the problem very fast? These are some burning topics of current software world arena! Watch out for further discussion!
So, what could go wrong in an application whose instances are running on large number of machines, say, 1000 machines? Say, a machine in a data center is down. Yesterday it was running great! Has someone changed some configuration parameter remotely? Has some files be removed? Who would know this? Is there a cool way to know this?
Why so much noise about configuration management of distributed applications? This is directly related to the fact that it has become much harder to manage complex distributed applications and companies are spending million of dollars for continuous applications management? But, they are not getting a solid concrete control on the software applications infrastructure. The question is how, what, when, where etc etc...
