Atrium ‘Ask the Expert’ Webinar

CMDB Drift Management

Presented by Pramod Shukla
April 2014
Today’s Agenda

Business case and Scenarios

Drift Management Introduction
Drift Management concepts and detecting Drifts
Remediating Drifts and Preferences Settings

[ Dial-in information available at: http://goo.gl/xswJHy ]

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Business Case

According to the best practices as per ITIL,

periodic audits of your IT environment must be
conducted to verify that the CMDB is up to
date and accurate.

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Scenario 1: Correct state vs. Current state

CMDB on CMDB on
10th March 2014 10th April 2014
Correct State Current State

Verify if delta changes are

correct

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Scenario 2: Current State vs. Standards

CMDB on
CMDB with Standard CIs 10th April 2014
Current State

Verify if Current State is

according to standards

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What is Drift?

Drift is a change in your IT environment.

CMDB on CMDB on
10th March 2014 10th April 2014
Correct State Current State

The delta change between the correct and the current state is
referred as Drift
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Introduction to Drift Management

Drift Management comprises of the following:

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3

Correct State Current State

Standards Standards Incident

X
Change
Drift Drift Drift request
Identify the drift Verify if the drift is Remediate the drift
correct

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Drift consumes Reconciled data

Discovery Reconciliation

Works on

Drift Management
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Architectural Overview

1 2

Snapshot job Discovery

Correct State

Baseline Target
(Snapshot dataset) (Current dataset)

5
Display
detected CIs Comparison job
Drift report 4 4
Compare CIs
Correlate
change to drift

Correlation Comparison service

service
Change Incident
Management Management
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Snapshot Job

What is a snapshot?
A snapshot is a copy of a subset of CIs from a source dataset.
This copy is available on another dataset (the destination dataset).

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Snapshot Job

A snapshot is created using the Drift Management Snapshot Job Wizard

using the following inputs:
• A source dataset of CIs
• A destination dataset
• A qualification set (to
narrow the number of CIs
copied to the destination
dataset)
• Options for copying CIs
• Copy Child (uses graph
search)

Applications > BMC Configuration Drift > Drift Console > Management > Job Console >
Click Create > Select Snapshot job

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Snapshot job

What is a Qualification set?

Qualification sets are created using Qualification Builder to interactively create queries
to narrow down the number of CIs to be copied. You can choose to create queries on:
All Objects
Custom Qualification Set

10k CIs
100 attributes per CI

Apply
Qualifications

7k CIs
100 attributes per CI

Applications > BMC Configuration Drift > Drift Console > Authoring > Qualification
Set> Click Create
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Snapshot Job

Source Dataset
Destination Dataset

Their Weakly
Custom 7K CIs + related CIs If Copy
Qualification Child Enabled

10K CIs

All Object

10K CIs

TARGET BASELINE

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Comparison Job

What is a Comparison job?

A comparison job compares the correct (baseline) and current (target)
dataset. Based on the comparison, it generates the drift report.
The comparison job, leverages Incident and Change Management to
validate the drift.

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Comparison Job

Comparison job is created using the Comparison Job Wizard using the
following inputs:
- Baseline with
Qualification set
- Target with Qualification
set
- Include/Exclude sets
(Optional)
- Comparison Details
 One to one comparison
or Many to one
comparison
 A compare or compare
recursively

Applications > BMC Configuration Drift > Drift Console > Management > Job Console >
Click Create > Select Comparison job

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Comparison Job

What is a Exclude set?

Exclude sets are created using Qualification Builder to create queries to narrow down
the number of attributes of CIs to be compared by excluding the selected attributes.

10k CIs
100 attributes per CI

Apply
Qualifications

7k CIs
100 attributes per CI

Apply
Exclude Set

7k CIs
70 attributes per CI

Applications > BMC Configuration Drift > Drift Console > Authoring > Exclude Sets> Click Create
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Comparison Job

What is a Include set?

Include sets are created using Qualification Builder to create queries to narrow down the
number of attributes of CIs to be compared by including the selected attributes.

10k CIs
100 attributes per CI

Apply
Qualifications

7k CIs
100 attributes per CI

Apply
Include Set

7k CIs
70 attributes per CI

Applications > BMC Configuration Drift > Drift Console > Authoring > Include Sets> Click Create
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Comparison Job

Include set behaviors

Default behavior : Select Class = BMC_ComputerSystem, Attribute = memory, Operator = EQ

Overriding the default operator : Select Class= BMC_ComputerSystem, Attribute = memory,

Operator = LT

Overriding the default operator and attribute value : Select Class= BMC_ComputerSystem, Attribute =
diskcapacity, Operator = GT, Value=20

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Comparison Details

Compare Regular
- comparison of top level CIs only
Compare recursive
- A compare recursive compares the top level CIs and their weakly related
children.
One-to-One
- uses the ReconciliationIdentity
Many-to-One
- A many-to-one comparison is used when you want to check a pre-defined
configuration (golden server) against all CIs of the same kind.

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How compare service tags drift

The following table, explains the different drift types:

CI Status Drift Type

Baseline CI not in Target Removed
Target CI not in Baseline Added
Matched CIs : Modified
If there is change in
attributes values
Change in Relationships RelationshipDrift

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Correlation Service

DSM:INTCHG : Change Management

CM Forms

DRIFT DSM: forms

Incident Management
DSM:INTHPD:

IM Forms

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Drift Report : Drift Details for a job

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Identifying cause of the drift

Identifying cause of the drift

- An unauthorized change
- An authorized change

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Remediating

Acknowledge
- The attribute status of Acknowledged is overwritten by the next run of the
comparison job

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Remediating

You create an incident request to investigate why a drift occurred.

The incident request you

created using Drift
Management goes through
the standard process flow
for a new incident request.
Incident request creation
does not affect the status
of a drift.

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Create a change

You create a change request to change BMC Atrium CMDB to the correct
baseline state.

 Status will change to

Addressed
 The newly created change
request will go through
change workflows.

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Configuring for better performance

Number of CIs retrieved (with one call) from BMC Atrium CMDB for initial
loading into memory
Number of CIs that are compared or copied at a time
Number of processor threads to use

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Filtering displayed change requests

This filtering applies only to New drift that is detected not to Addressed.
The default filtering displays change requests with the following statuses:
 Implementation In Progress
 Pending
 Completed

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Configuring drift correlation to a change
request relationship

You can refine how the correlation service correlates drifts to a

change request by:
- Using the CI relationship type, for example, Related To, Upgrades, and
Repairs.
- Specifying a time window for defining how long (in days) a completed
change request is eligible for correlating to a drift.

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Finally , all together

Snapshot Job
- Input
 Qualification Set
 Source/Destination Dataset
- Output
 Snapshot Dataset

Comparison Job
- Input
 Baseline
 Target
 Include/Exclude Sets
- Output
 Drifted CIs

Remediate the Drifts

- Acknowledge
- Create Change
- Create Incidents

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Drift Management References

• Webinar series:
• https://communities.bmc.com/docs/DOC-22363

• Drift Management webinar page:

https://communities.bmc.com/community/bmcdn/bmc_atrium_and_foundation_techn
ologies/blog/2014/03/28/atrium-webinar-understanding-cmdb-drift-management
• Wiki Docs for Drift Management :
https://docs.bmc.com/docs/display/ac81/BMC+Configuration+Drift+Management

https://docs.bmc.com/docs/display/ac81/Installing+BMC+Configuration+Drift+Manag
ement

https://docs.bmc.com/docs/display/ac81/Drift+Management+installation+logging

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