Chapter 3: Change and Configuration Management 49
Defining Configuration Items
When defining configuration items you need to decide how deeply you want to go in recording the them. Too many configuration items makes the relationships too difficult to manage and costs start to increase. There are strong benefits to making the configuration management database as simple as possible to actively reflect the environment in which it is working, then adding in additional configuration items as and when they are required.
Configuration Management and Exchange
One of the main barriers to implementing configuration management in an organization is the perception that it must be implemented throughout the organization or not at all. This is by no means true. Configuration management can effectively apply to one part of the organization without touching other parts of it. It is true, of course, that the more wide- spread configuration management is in a company, the more
In many cases, setting up configuration management for Exchange proves to be a pre- cursor to setting it up elsewhere. You should not be afraid of starting with Exchange for the configuration management process if it has not been implemented before in your company.
In the example of upgrading the servers running Exchange shown previously, you can see from the simple set of relationships, that upgrading the hardware affects a series of related areas:
At the very least, new hardware may affect the following elements of the configuration management database:
◆User roles. All users who have their mailboxes located on the server may have service interrupted and after the upgrade should expect better service. Consulting the configu- ration management database should reveal the identity of these users.
◆The RFC. An RFC will have been submitted to initiate this change. The RFC status will be altered as the change is implemented
◆Vendor. If the new hardware is from a different vendor, new configuration items may be required.
◆Documentation. New documentation will be needed to support the new hardware in place.
Maintaining the Configuration Management Database
For configuration management to work properly, it is vital that all the information in the configuration management database is up to date and accurate. Your IT staff will very rapidly lose confidence in the system if, for example, they consult the database to find
