ITIL Configuration Management

Configuration Management is the implementation of a database (Configuration Management

Database – CMDB) that contains details of the organisation’s elements that are used in the
provision and management of its IT services. This is more than just an ‘asset register’, as it will
contain information that relates to the maintenance, movement, and problems experienced with
the Configuration Items.

The CMDB also holds a much wider range of information about items that the organisation’s IT
Services are dependant upon. This range of information includes:

o Hardware
o Software
o Documentation
o Personnel

Configuration Management essentially consists of 4 tasks:

Identification – this is the specification, identification of all IT components and their inclusion in
the CMDB.
Control – this is the management of each Configuration Item, specifying who is authorised to
‘change’ it.
Status – this task is the recording of the status of all Configuration Items in the CMDB, and the
maintenance of this information.
Verification – this task involves reviews and audits to ensure the information contained in the
CMDB is accurate.

See the ITIL Toolkit for more information on Configuration Management within the ITIL
context.

Configuration Management and IT Security

Without the definition of all configuration items that are used to provide an organisation’s IT
services, it can be very difficult to identify which items are used for which services. This could
result in critical configuration items being stolen, moved or misplaced, affecting the availability
of the services dependant upon them. It could also result in unauthorised items being used in the
provision of IT services.

 
General CM Planning and Support

Development of the configuration management plan is of course is a complex task and requires a
great deal of effort. To assist in this process a specific support kit has recently been launched:
The Configuration Management Planning Toolkit. This comprises a number of descrete
materials, similar to the ITIL Toolkit, but focused entirely upon configuration management plans
and how to create them.

ITIL Service Level Management

What is it?

Service Level Management (SLM) is one of five components in the ITIL Service Delivery area.
It is arguably the most important set of processes within the ITIL framework. SLM processes
provide a framework by which services are defined, service levels required to support business
processes are agreed upon, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Operational Level
Agreements (OLAs) are developed to satisfy the agreements, and costs of services are
developed.

Executing Service Level Management processes permits IT staff to more accurately and cost
effectively provision identified levels of service to the business. The processes ensure business
and IT understand their roles and responsibilities and empower the business units.

In the end, business units are justifying to senior management the levels of service needed to
support business processes, not IT. And the built-in continuous improvement processes ensure
that when business needs change, supporting IT services change with them.

Service Level Management activities include:

 Identifying business requirements by working with business units

 Establishing the scope of services, timeliness, hours of operation, recovery aspects, and service
performance
 Translating business requirements into IT requirements
  Developing and maintaining a service catalog, including costs for different tiers of service
performance
 Performing gap analysis between business requirements and available services.
 Determining the costs related to services such that service goals satisfy business needs at a price
the business can afford
 Drafting, negotiating and refining SLAs with the business units, ensuring business requirements
are met and agreement from all parties involved
 Implementing SLAs
 Measuring SLA performance, reporting results and adjusting as necessary

Why should I implement Service Level Management?

Immediate benefits to implementing SLM processes include:

 Enabling a better understanding between business units and IT

 Setting more accurate service quality expectations and effectively measuring, monitoring and
reporting service quality
 Clearly delineating roles and responsibilities
 Providing the necessary flexibility for business to react quickly to market conditions
 Creating more accurate infrastructure sizing based on clearly defining service levels
 Avoiding or mitigating the costs of excess or insufficient capacity
 Providing discipline in supporting internal or external sourcing of IT services

Service Level Management teams have close ties to business processes and customer
management, Financial Management for IT Services, and Capacity Management. Capacity
Management provides performance data to the SLM team for SLA sizing. Service Level
Management passes information about service gaps and interruptions back to Capacity
Management for capacity assessment and implementation of required changes.

TeamQuest Addresses ITIL Service Level Management

TeamQuest directly supports ITIL Service Level Management processes by providing a practical
approach for determining SLAs and helping identify the right balance of service and associated
costs to provision it. TeamQuest Model allows you to run multiple scenarios to show business
units the impact of various SLA decisions - helping to determine the optimal performance levels
needed to meet business unit goals while ensuring that these metrics can be tracked and reported
on an ongoing basis.

TeamQuest IT Service Analyzer and TeamQuest IT Service Reporter provide unique flexibility
to run reports using performance data in whatever manner is necessary to document performance
against SLA metrics. These products also provide a monthly analysis and capture historical data
for trend reporting, which enables IT to proactively predict potential issues and address them
before they become a problem.

TeamQuest tools support Service Level Management by:

  Gathering historical and real-time data on service performance
 Determining current levels of service to use as a starting point in SLA negotiations
 Providing the performance data required to make informed decisions regarding SLAs
 Allowing you to experiment with multiple scenarios to determine resources needed to meet
business unit goals
 Determining whether SLAs are sustainable on current hardware or if upgrades are required
 Tracking and reporting service performance against SLAs on an ongoing basis
 Proactively alerting IT of impending bottlenecks so they can be resolved before impacting
service performance

As with all major projects, proper planning is key. TeamQuest recommends following these
steps for implementing ITIL Service Level Management:

1. Gather the data. Identify a SLM manager and form a team to spearhead the implementation.
The team must perform several duties: (Expand)
2. Build the plan. The implementation plan should: (Expand)

Be sure to communicate the organization and its processes to the rest of the company,
preferably through your internal corporate communications team.

Once the project plan and budget are complete, they should be submitted for approval.

3. Execute the plan. You will want to execute the project plan in a series of steps: (Expand)
4. Initiate the ongoing work of SLM. Begin the reporting process. Include the ability to: (Expand)
5. Post implementation review. Document lessons learned and identify any changes that should
be made to the process to facilitate future process migrations. Perform a post-implementation
audit 6-12 months after completion to determine if the new processes are being adhered to and
if you're getting expected results.
Implementing ITIL?
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ITIL

The Business Perspective Application Management ICT Infrastructure Management Security Management Service Support

Incident ManagementProblem ManagementConfiguration Management

Service Delivery

Service Level Management

Financial ManagementCapacity ManagementContinuity ManagementAvailability Management

U.S. Public Sector

Related Links

Webinars:

ITIL Best Practices - Revealing Business Value

White Papers:

Implementing Service Level Management:

Part 4 of a 5 part series 

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ITIL Configuration Management

What is it?

Configuration Management (CfM) is one of the components in the ITIL Service Support area.
The primary focus of CfM is to identify, maintain and verify information on IT assets and
configurations in the enterprise.

CfM stores up-to-date information about Configuration Items (CIs), which are simply IT
infrastructure components as you define them such as hardware, software, documentation, or
even personnel. CIs are stored in a Configuration Management Database, or CMDB. The CMDB
contains a variety of information on CIs such as version and location, as well as relationships
between CIs.

Configuration Management activities include:

 Defining the scope - the depth and breadth - of the CMDB

 Identifying CIs and entering them into the CMDB
 Collecting, recording and maintaining accurate information about CIs

Why should I implement Configuration Management?

Benefits of implementing Configuration Management processes include:

 Establishing a reliable repository of accurate information regarding IT components

 Understanding relationships between CIs and what components impact which services

Configuration Management processes are closely integrated with Incident Management, Problem
Management, Change Management and Release Management.

TeamQuest Addresses ITIL Configuration Management

TeamQuest provides basic levels of CMDB support. TeamQuest data collectors gather server
configuration information as part of its normal operations. The data is employed to support
analysis and modeling activities. In organizations where CMDBs do not exist, TeamQuest IT
Service Analyzer can provide basic CMDB services for servers, providing online viewing of
configuration information and both scheduled and ad hoc reporting.
Where a CMDB already exists, data can be easily extracted from TeamQuest databases and
imported into the CMDB. Since TeamQuest automatically detects changes and stores them in the
database, you can automate the export/import process to ensure the CMDB always has the latest
information. The extract can also be used as an audit trail to assist the Configuration
Management and Audit teams in validating that all changes to server configuration were
authorized.

Configuration Management teams can work with Capacity Management teams to employ
TeamQuest Model to predict the impacts of configuration changes on the IT infrastructure before
they are actually implemented. Doing so permits the teams to ensure changes will not negatively
impact production services.
Implementing ITIL?
Contact TeamQuest