CMDB Standard – Truth or Dare

CMDB standards, do they exist or not? What about the CMDBf Consortium or CIM with the DMTF? The topic of CMDB is much like discussing religion or politics, volatile and dangerous territory and I find the topic of standards in this arena as annoying as NoVA traffic.

Every so often I run into this question and discussion and I view it as nothing more than fodder because while managing IT infrastructure principally does not change from organization to organization, I have never run into two organizations with exactly the same configurations and the drivers for their CMDB projects especially when an organization is mature enough to apply the CMDB to the services of the organization. So when I’m asked this question I often respond with some of the following questions:

    -- Tell me how you plan to use the standard?
    -- What value do you expect from the standard?
    -- Are you planning to implement their model?
    -- How did you come across this standard?
    -- Are you comfortable with the members of the board?
    -- Do you know who they are?
 
I am normally greeted with the classic “deer in the headlight” stare as most folks have Googled the term or have heard of CIM and CMDBf, but do not truly understand the objectives and the value these models, standards and organizations bring to the table. I do not mean to take the wind out of your sails, but when it comes to CMDB there is no silver bullet standard or model. There are methods, models and processes to leverage (a legal word for plagerism or stealing), but they must be applied to each individual environment.

Gartner has written on the topic of the CMDBf and recommends against waiting on the CMDBf specification for communication / integration to become a standard before implementing a CMDB.  This is a consortium of vendors, but not representative of the whole of the vendor market attempting to define a standard for communication and integration of CMDB’s. I hate to ask a highly controversial question, but wouldn’t you as a consumer like to see these vendors integrate their own software products first and keep them open and able to integrate to other solutions? Just an obvious question from this humble observer.

I find the DMTF as a much more credible standard to leverage as it is a consortium of more than 4,000 active participants, representing 44 countries and nearly 200 organizations. The organization has been around for 15 years and is more of a defacto standards body with participation by more than a select number of vendors and includes end user organizations. However, the CIM model is still not a silver bullet in the arena of CMDB’s either. The down side is the volume of classes and relationships in the CIM model being on the magnitude of a “boil the ocean” project.

In closing I’d like to say that there are no silver bullets in terms of standards, out of the box CMDB’s, however, there are sources that can be leveraged for ideas and starting points. The CIM model is one of those with class definitions with corresponding attributes and allowable relationships. Take what makes sense in your environment and define the base model of relationships as works in your environment starting with a key application or service with high impact to the organization.

-- Michele