CMDB with automated discovery

Table of Contents

• What is configuration management?
• Why is configuration management important?
  • Building robust and stable systems
  • Managing cost efficiency
  • Keeping data secure in a single, central location
  • Tracking data in real-time and access to customizable reports
• An overview of the problems that CMDB discovery can solve
• How does CMDB asset discovery help with configuration management?
  • Agentless discovery to discover most CIs
  • Agent-based discovery for when agentless isn’t enough
  • Integration with legacy platforms
• Virima CMDB with automated discovery is your answer to all CMDB woes

Configuration management is a crucial part of IT operations. It is the process of maintaining and controlling the physical, software and logical components used to run your business. It is important to keep track of all these things so that your company can make sure they remain operational and secure at all times. 

But if you don’t have good configuration management in place it can be difficult for teams to know what’s happening with their systems. We’ll talk about why it’s imperative to manage your CMDBs effectively and how CMDB discovery helps with this problem.

Read about understanding dependencies between CIs here.

What is configuration management?

Configuration management includes the processes, tools and techniques used to define, protect and control information associated with specific components of a computer system. 

Configuration management is used to verify that any changes made to systems are authorized and in accordance with known standards. It helps ensure that your company’s infrastructure is consistent, reliable, and secure.

Configuration management is important because it allows you to:

• Keep track of what changes have been made to your environment over time so that when issues arise they can be diagnosed quickly and efficiently.
• Reduce risk by ensuring that any changes made do not break existing functionality or cause new problems elsewhere in the system (i.e., “breaking” A causes B).

Why is configuration management important?

When you’re managing a lot of assets and projects, it can be difficult to keep track of where everything is and what state it’s in. Configuration management tools like CMDB discovery help you do this by providing a single source of truth for all your IT assets, making sure that everyone has access to the same information at once.

Using CMDB discovery will also help make your teams more efficient by eliminating redundancies in their workflows: instead of having multiple people work on the same thing separately (which leads to mistakes), everyone will use the same database instead so they always know where each asset is located and what its current status is.

Here are some reasons why configuration management is important.

Building robust and stable systems

As your organization grows, so too does the complexity of your technology stack. Configuration management is an important tool to help teams build robust and stable systems. It enables you to have visibility into all aspects of your infrastructure, from systems to networks and containers, including how components interact with one another. This visibility provides the ability to understand how your individual services are behaving in production and allows for rapid remediation if issues arise. 

Managing cost efficiency

Configuration management helps companies to reduce expenses as well as time on operations that can be a big hurdle for business efficiency, especially when multiple tools are needed. The benefits of configuration management include a reduction in product backlog, efficiency in project delivery, greater stability for users, reduced customer churn and improved customer satisfaction.

Keeping data secure in a single, central location

One of the main benefits of configuration management is that it secures your information. It stores all your workers’ files in one central server and lets you get access to them anytime you want. This way, employees can work towards a common goal and collaborate with each other even when they are located remotely in different locations. Configuration management also prevents any cyber-attacks or data leaks by ensuring only those who are authorized can view the documents at any point in time.

Tracking data in real-time and access to customizable reports

Configuration management ensures everyone in your company has access to the right information at the right time. This allows you to create customized reports and insights, and at the same time, prevent information overload. Configuration minimizes productivity losses by allowing managers to gain a multidimensional view of reports based on teams, departments, roles, and so on in real-time.

Optimize your CMDB with application dependency mapping

An overview of the problems that CMDB discovery can solve

CMDB discovery provides a solution for companies that want to improve their CMDBs. Improve uptime and speed, reduce risk and costs, and gain valuable insights with CMDB discovery. Discover all the data, relationships and dependencies in your IT landscape – from network to cloud – across your entire infrastructure. Then build a comprehensive and accurate IT model that can be used to alert you of any critical issues before they happen.

CMDB discovery helps you keep your CMDB up-to-date by discovering configuration items and their relationships automatically, without having to manually enter them into the system yourself. This means that if you have new assets or changes in existing ones, these will automatically be added into your CMDB without requiring any manual effort from yourself or other employees who may not even know what they’re looking for when trying something like this (or maybe just don’t have time).

How does CMDB asset discovery help with configuration management?

The first step to using CMDB asset discovery to fix your company’s configuration management problems is to understand how it works. CMDB discovery is a cloud-based solution that helps you keep your CMDB up to date by automating the discovery process. The tool can also help you get started with configuration management in just a few minutes, without having to invest time or money on installing and configuring software on-premises.

CMDB discovery helps companies keep their Configuration Management Databases up to date so that teams can rely on them for a single source of truth.

It is a tool that helps you to keep your CMDB up to date. It can help you find missing, outdated or inaccurate data, then fix the problem. You can also use CMDB Discovery to make sure that the information in your CMDB is always current by automatically updating it at regular intervals.

Agentless discovery to discover most CIs

Agentless approaches are quickly becoming the norm in configuration management and asset management. These techniques lower the administrative overhead of a project and can reach almost any type of device visible in the network. However, agent-based approaches do have some advantages. 

They can be more efficient, increase visibility into what’s happening on the network, and provide more granular data about changes to the infrastructure. They’re also more likely to support compliance reporting requirements by capturing information from many more sources than an agentless solution.

Agent-based discovery for when agentless isn’t enough

When your CMDB is unavailable or unreliable and an application requires in-depth information because of its criticality, you can use the agent-based discovery feature to collect more information. Agent-based discovery is also beneficial when enterprises need to collect information from legacy platforms or laptops used by remote workers.

Integration with legacy platforms

Most large enterprises have legacy applications that run on less popular platforms. To ensure you can maximize the value of using configuration management data and assets in your enterprise, it’s important to select a CMDB tool or discovery technique that supports the right mix of vendors.

Virima CMDB with automated discovery is your answer to all CMDB woes

CMDB discovery tools can help your company solve its configuration management problems. We hope you now have a better understanding of what CMDB asset discovery is, how it works and why it’s important for your organization. 

IT asset discovery is a key element of the CMDB, providing an up-to-date view of all IT assets across your entire network. Virima’s solution for IT asset Discovery can automatically discover and catalog the network infrastructure, servers, applications and devices – whether they are on premise or in the cloud. Whether you’re deploying new hardware in a cloud service environment or upgrading your existing on-premise or cloud solutions, it is important to know what hardware is connected to those updates so that you can support those components in the appropriate manner.

Virima Discovery is a purpose-built, agentless discovery solution that delivers real time visibility into hosts and applications across your network. It is purpose-built on AWS for multi-tenancy with full data segregation between tenants. Multiple service offerings are available ranging from standard scanning of multiple IP networks to web application & database discovery. 

Remotely download the Virima Discovery App to any Windows server with access to the IP network you wish to scan. Alternatively, a dedicated Windows host in your environment can be installed at an IT department or local security office location if so desired.If you’re interested in learning more about Virima CMDB and Discovery or would like assistance with any aspect of your IT infrastructure – from managing software updates to ensuring compliance with security standards, schedule a demo with Virima today!