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 cost-effective it becomes, but
this does not preclude you from implementing configuration management cost-effectively
in your company, even if it affects only Exchange.
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