Distributed CMDB information within a service management ticketing system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9767134-B2
Application number	US-201414242611-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 1, 2014
Priority date	Apr 1, 2014
Publication date	Sep 19, 2017
Grant date	Sep 19, 2017

Abstract

A method and/or computer program product locally manages configuration item (CI) information on CI systems. A request is received for authorized CI information that describes an authorized change to be made to a particular CI system. In response to receiving the request for the authorized CI information, a ticketing system searches a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) stub database for a location of a CI to be changed according to the authorized change to the particular CI system, where the CMDB stub database contains no CIs, and where the CMDB stub database contains a location of CI systems in which CIs are locally stored. One or more processors initiates the authorized change to the particular CI system requested by the request, and updates, by the particular CI system, the CI in the particular CI system to reflect the authorized change to the particular CI system.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method to locally manage configuration item (CI) information on CI systems, the method comprising:
receiving, by one or more processors, a request for authorized CI information, wherein authorized CI information describes an authorized change to be made to a particular CI system;
in response to receiving the request for the authorized CI information, searching, by a ticketing system, a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) stub database for a location of a CI to be changed according to the authorized change to the particular CI system, wherein the CI is a document that provides a description of the particular CI system, wherein the CMDB stub database contains no CIs, wherein the CMDB stub database contains a location of CI systems in which CIs are locally stored, wherein the CI systems in which the CIs are locally stored are configured according to the CIs that are stored within the CI systems, and wherein the ticketing system is a hardware system;
initiating, by one or more processors in the particular CI system, the authorized change to the particular CI system requested by the request;
updating, by one or more processors, the CI in the particular CI system to reflect the authorized change to the particular CI system;
parsing, by a parser system, the request into multiple sub-requests, wherein each of the multiple sub-requests is a query for a description of a same component found in each of multiple CI systems;
determining, by the parser system, whether an answer to one or more of the multiple sub-requests is stored in a cache in the CMDB stub database;
in response to determining that the answer to the one or more of the multiple sub-requests is not stored in the cache, associating, by the parser system, each of the multiple CI systems with a particular CI;
transmitting, by the parser system, each of the multiple sub-requests to the particular CI in a corresponding CI system from the multiple CI systems;
receiving, by the parser system, responses to all of the multiple sub-requests;
generating, by the parser system, a final report based on the responses to all of the multiple sub-systems, wherein the final report comprises a description of a size of memory in each of the multiple CI systems;
running, by one or more processors, a CI variance scan, wherein the CI variance scan scans CIs in the CI systems to determine if any variances to the CIs have occurred since a last CI variance scan; and
running, by one or more processors, a CI dependency scan, wherein the CI dependency scan determines a hop count of dependencies required to locate the particular CI system, wherein the hop count identifies a quantity of multiple devices that must be traversed in order to reach a CI that is stored in the particular CI system, and wherein the multiple devices comprise a Linux server, a database server, and a switch.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving, by one or more processors, a request for a cross CI report, wherein the cross CI report identifies all CIs that describe a predefined descriptor of the particular CI system; and
generating, by one or more processors, the cross CI report.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
filtering, by the ticketing system, CIs based on a type of computer system represented by the CIs; and
directing, by one or more processors, the request to the particular CI system based on filtered CIs.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
displaying, by one or more processors, Universal Identifiers (UIDs) for a plurality of CI systems; and
receiving, by one or more processors, a selected UID for the particular CI system in which the authorized change is to be made.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the request is received from a change owner, and wherein the method further comprises:
in response to the change owner being unable to determine which CI to choose as the particular CI system, querying, by a parser system, the plurality of CI systems for attribute information, wherein the parser system is a hardware system;
populating, by one or more processors, the CMDB stub database with the attribute information for the plurality of CI systems.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
in response to a variance being found, transmitting, by one or more processors, a communication to the ticketing system to automatically generate an Incident, wherein the Incident identifies the variance that is found.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the ticketing system runs the CI variance scan.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein a managing server runs the CI variance scan, wherein the managing server manages changes to the CI systems.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the particular CI system runs the CI variance scan locally.

10. A computer program product for locally managing configuration item (CI) on CI systems, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having program code embodied therewith, the program code readable and executable by a processor to perform a method comprising:
receiving a request for authorized CI information, wherein authorized CI information describes an authorized change to be made to a particular CI system;
in response to receiving the request for the authorized CI information, searching, by a ticketing system, a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) stub database for a location of a CI to be changed according to the authorized change to the particular CI system, wherein the CI is a document that provides a description of the particular CI system, wherein the CMDB stub database contains no CIs, wherein the CMDB stub database contains a location of CI systems in which CIs are locally stored, and wherein the CI systems in which the CIs are locally stored are configured according to the CIs that are stored within the CI systems;
receiving a request for a cross CI report, wherein the cross CI report identifies all CIs that describe a predefined descriptor of the particular CI system;
generating the cross CI report;
initiating the authorized change to the particular CI system requested by the request;
updating the CI in the particular CI system to reflect the authorized change to the particular CI system;
parsing the request into multiple sub-requests, wherein each of the multiple sub-requests is a query for a description of a same component found in each of multiple CI systems;
determining whether an answer to one or more of the multiple sub-requests is stored in a cache in the CMDB stub database;
in response to determining that the answer to the one or more of the multiple sub-requests is not stored in the cache, associating each of the multiple CI systems with a particular CI;
transmitting each of the multiple sub-requests to the particular CI in a corresponding CI system from the multiple CI systems;
receiving responses to all of the multiple sub-requests;
generating a final report based on the responses to all of the multiple sub-systems, wherein the final report comprises a description of a size of memory in each of the multiple CI systems;
running a CI variance scan, wherein the CI variance scan scans CIs in the CI systems to determine if any variances to the CIs have occurred since a last CI variance scan; and
running a CI dependency scan, wherein the CI dependency scan determines a hop count of dependencies required to locate the particular CI system, wherein the hop count identifies a quantity of multiple devices that must be traversed in order to reach a CI that is stored in the particular CI system, and wherein the multiple devices comprise a Linux server, a database server, and a switch.

11. The computer

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Anderson Eric M
• Davis Robert A
• Dawson Christopher J
• Radhakrishnan Rajesh

Classifications

• G06F16/23

  Updating · CPC title

• H04L41/0813 Primary

  characterised by the conditions triggering a change of settings · CPC title

• G06F17/30365

  Physics · mapped topic

• H04L41/28

  Restricting access to network management systems or functions, e.g. using authorisation function to access network configuration · CPC title

• G06F17/30345 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic