What’s Configuration Management? Techniques, Tools + Examples

A CM course of and its supporting repository, CMDB or CMS, face the challenge of overlapping and contradicting knowledge from sources throughout the enterprise. A configuration management plan should embrace a approach to merge and reconcile CIs to current a single point of reference or sole supply of reality. Effective configuration administration is important for optimizing IT automation within a business. It helps teams make informed decisions about modifications to their IT infrastructure and belongings, and it facilitates clear communication amongst stakeholders by prioritizing clear, constant documentation of system states throughout the lifecycle. Configuration identification is the process of figuring out the attributes that outline every side of a configuration item (CI) at any time limit.

what is configuration control

More of the enterprise IT environment makes use of virtualization, automation and administration to provision, deploy and handle resources and services via software program. With the rise of data middle applied sciences such as software-defined storage, software-defined networking, SDDC and IaC, future CM tools and practices must be able to uncover and interoperate with versatile and digital software program environments. Consistency — doing the same issues in the identical methods — also performs instantly into quality-of-service (QoS) and repair delivery, and configuration management holds a core position here. Service supply helps to guarantee that the environment (and the hardware and software operating therein) operates in a identified and validated method. IT service management (ITSM) frameworks corresponding to ITIL take the idea even further by outlining the processes, people and merchandise involved in service delivery.

Customer Assist

Availability of accurate and well timed data is important to guarantee that CM to supply operational worth and a scarcity of this can typically be a limiting factor. Capturing and disseminating the working data to the assorted https://www.globalcloudteam.com/glossary/configuration-control/ support organizations is changing into an business in itself. Configuration management can even mechanically right issues to make sure that your systems perform as anticipated.

Learn how artificial Intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) makes use of knowledge and machine learning to improve and automate IT service management. The IBM Instana Observability platform is a fully automated real-time observability platform that places efficiency information in context to ship speedy identification and assist forestall and remediate issues. It’s simple for these configuration values to turn into an afterthought, leading to the configuration to turn into disorganized and scattered. Configuration management solves this challenge by creating a “source of truth” with a central location for configuration.

what is configuration control

Specifically, it goals to guarantee that operations aren’t disrupted because of the asset (or parts of the asset) overrunning limits of planned lifespan or beneath high quality ranges. ITIL specifies the utilization of a Configuration management system (CMS) or Configuration management database (CMDB) as a way of attaining trade best practices for Configuration Management. By selling a greater understanding of change administration in the organization, configuration management provides teams with the knowledge they need to make higher choices quickly. Specifically, the infrastructure concerned in supporting the business depends on configuration administration. In brief, when change is made in the underlying enterprise infrastructure, it needs to be automated and trusted to find a way to be helpful.

It is significant that IT staff and business leaders perceive exactly what is present in the surroundings and make positive that every gadget, OS and utility is configured in a identified and acceptable means. Consequently, configuration administration supplies an underlying consistency to the IT environment. When a device requires service or alternative, a longtime configuration provides a baseline that could be preserved and applied to alternative devices.

Product Sources

Red Hat® Ansible® Automation Platform helps your group accelerate, orchestrate, and innovate with automation. As you grow, you can scale your automation with control and insight, foster collaboration across teams, and handle coverage and governance. The consumers of this information have grown extra quite a few and complicated with the expansion of packages offered by authentic gear producers (OEMs). These are designed to supply operators guaranteed availability and make the picture extra complex with the operator managing the asset but the OEM taking over the legal responsibility to ensure its serviceability.

what is configuration control

CM instruments can apply policies persistently throughout a community and configure intrusion detection methods and firewalls automatically. The Promise principle of configuration upkeep was developed by Mark Burgess,[16][17][18] with a practical implementation on current day laptop systems within the software program CFEngine able to perform actual time restore as properly as preventive upkeep. Hello Anonymous,That’s an fascinating query and I assume there may be others having the same doubt. The project artifacts, including the Project Management Plan itself, are stored in a Configuration Management System. So, in a way you’ll look into the Project Management Plan, but the Project Management Plan itself is physically saved in a Configuration Management System.

Network Configuration Administration

A CM device helps a business enforce a desired configuration state for each item and supplies well timed alerts of any configuration problems. Whether you should put together your central campus for its new role as a hub of hybrid work otherwise you’re scaling out tons of (or thousands) of department sites, cloud-based network administration systems are designed to give you the flexibility and reach you want. These platforms offer quick access and monitoring throughout highly distributed networks and make provisioning of remote websites simple.

what is configuration control

Adding configuration administration data alongside code in a Git repository offers a holistic version control view of a complete project. The following list of other configuration management instruments is designed to be saved in a Git repository and leverage Git version control monitoring. A configuration management system (CMS) is a set of tools and processes for managing the configurations of computer methods, including software program, hardware, and networks. A configuration administration system can organize and management configurations to implement a constant desired state over time. One of the best drivers for tomorrow’s CM mannequin lies in software-defined environments.

Application deployment and configuration management outline and enforce the assets wanted to run the construct in a desired configuration. The final step is precise deployment, where the construct is delivered for signoff to deployment — or automatically deployed to stay servers — and connected to operating providers as desired. CM tools such as Ansible, Puppet, Chef and SaltStack are typically geared toward the latter a half of the CI/CD toolchain, where workloads are deployed into the info heart’s hardware environment.

What’s Configuration Management? A Comprehensive Information

They also present advanced features corresponding to analytics, assurance, and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Organizations that want sovereign operations can benefit from on-premises community management servers, since all the info is saved onsite. Network configuration management is the method of sustaining configuration information for optimal functioning of a network, in addition to the lifecycle management of the community and its elements. This was done to move away from a reactive type of community administration to a proactive strategy, as, for example, to empower directors to take extra management of their infrastructure to determine and rectify minor points before they become main issues.

what is configuration control

IT teams use configuration assessments and drift analyses to continuously determine systems which have strayed from the specified system state and have to be up to date, reconfigured, or patched. A configuration administration system enables visibility, reporting, auditability, and enforcement of configurations across a system. The fundamental features of a configuration management system embody model management, change management, configuration management, auditing, release administration, and extra.

During on going project if we need to refer the present baseline say Schedule Base Line ought to we check Project Management Plan or Configuration Management Knowledge base. In a functional group is the most typical form of group construction where staff members are grouped by specialty, corresponding to engineering, manufacturi… Read in regards to the newest and greatest, how-tos, greatest practices, and use instances from our consultants and experienced product users. All rights are reserved, including these for textual content and knowledge mining, AI training, and related applied sciences. This course will train you how to automate Linux® system administration duties with the newest model of Ansible Automation Platform.

Why Is Configuration Management Important?

Understanding the “as is” state of an asset and its main components is an important component in preventive upkeep as used in maintenance, repair, and overhaul and enterprise asset administration systems. In reality, earlier than you even pick a configuration management system, it’s best to spend time figuring out why you need one. Every configuration administration system is designed to do an identical set of staple items. The various sorts of configuration administration and the particular methods it will get there all ladder up to imposing a desired state in a system.

  • Configuration administration instruments must also provide the flexibleness to each manage systems on an ongoing foundation and carry out advert hoc administrative actions when required.
  • Configuration administration was the method to maintain consistency of the performance and performance with the necessities and design throughout the lifecycle of defense tools.
  • CM processes are driven by management instruments that enable IT administrators to construct a workstation or server with specific settings and then apply these settings to different belongings.
  • By comparability, configuration administration is often concerned solely with an asset while it is in operation.

This collection of on-demand movies introduces you to using Ansible Automation Platform for a big selection of use circumstances throughout IT environments. Explore studying materials and instruments designed to assist you use Ansible Automation Platform, organized by the duties you need to accomplish.

Configuration Administration Processes: Essential Steps

For example, configuration requirements could additionally be different for a network firewall that functions as part of an organization’s Internet boundary versus one that functions as an inner local network firewall. Another rising expertise to contemplate is GitOps, which enables a knowledge middle group to deploy container clusters utilizing the Git code management and model control system. This successfully merges the usage of containers, software program growth paradigms and SDDC capabilities to ensure that a container could be deployed using the specified software parts in a suitable software-defined setting. Configuration management is the practice of systematically identifying and monitoring IT property, their status, and relationships among them. The right community configuration supplies IT with the processes to regulate modifications to components or parameters. This helps ensure the constant operation and performance of IT techniques throughout their lifecycle and offers IT with the power to easily identify faulty modifications to the community, components, or software program, decreasing downtime.

Compliance configuration is the act of configuring infrastructure and techniques to allow compliance with regulatory requirements such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI. It tends to be more literal and detailed — for instance, if somebody asks you for instructions to a Best Buy store, the imperative response would come with all the particular turns and distances to succeed in the vacation spot. To get to a Best Buy retailer, the declarative response would be to supply the shop’s handle — it doesn’t matter a lot which route an individual takes to get there. Configuration administration embraces declarative programming, which allows targets to be acknowledged more clearly and concisely.

Moreover, every build should be totally tested, and configuration management can be employed to specify the tools and take a look at information wanted to validate a given build. When paired with automation, CM techniques can accelerate testing and release processes. Organizations regularly undertake multiple tasks, every involving myriad elements and a quantity of builders or groups.

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