DevOps.com

  • Latest
    • Articles
    • Features
    • Most Read
    • News
    • News Releases
  • Topics
    • AI
    • Continuous Delivery
    • Continuous Testing
    • Cloud
    • Culture
    • DevSecOps
    • Enterprise DevOps
    • Leadership Suite
    • DevOps Practice
    • ROELBOB
    • DevOps Toolbox
    • IT as Code
  • Videos/Podcasts
    • DevOps Chats
    • DevOps Unbound
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming
    • On-Demand Webinars
  • Library
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • On-Demand Events
  • Sponsored Communities
    • AWS Community Hub
    • CloudBees
    • IT as Code
    • Rocket on DevOps.com
    • Traceable on DevOps.com
    • Quali on DevOps.com
  • Related Sites
    • Techstrong Group
    • Container Journal
    • Security Boulevard
    • Techstrong Research
    • DevOps Chat
    • DevOps Dozen
    • DevOps TV
    • Digital Anarchist
  • Media Kit
  • About
  • AI
  • Cloud
  • Continuous Delivery
  • Continuous Testing
  • DevSecOps
  • Leadership Suite
  • Practices
  • ROELBOB
  • Low-Code/No-Code
  • IT as Code
  • More Topics
    • Application Performance Management/Monitoring
    • Culture
    • Enterprise DevOps

Home » Blogs » Enterprise DevOps » Resurrecting the CMDB Through a Singular Path to Production

Resurrecting the CMDB Through a Singular Path to Production

By: Kristian Nelson on March 28, 2016 Leave a Comment

Change consistency (or the predictability of how change is deployed) followed by change transparency (or the visibility into the state of change at any stage in the software development life cycle [SDLC]) are two key benefits of embracing a highly functioning enterprise-class DevOps set of services. Most organizations are attempting to transform themselves from a widely varied manual delivery system to an automated, template-based delivery model that DevOps relies upon.

Recent Posts By Kristian Nelson
  • DevOps and the Identity Conundrum
  • DevOps and Automation Abstraction?
  • Putting Ops Back in DevOps
More from Kristian Nelson
Related Posts
  • Resurrecting the CMDB Through a Singular Path to Production
  • How DevOps is Killing QA
  • DevOps for Salesforce: CI/CD Challenges
    Related Categories
  • Enterprise DevOps
    Related Topics
  • asset location
  • CMDB
  • devops
  • DevOps Continuum
  • documentation
  • engineering
  • maintenance
  • real time change
Show more
Show less

Along this journey a key fact soon emerges: We cannot allow “manual” tweaks to our environments and maintain the predictability, visibility or the stability we want. To be truly consistent, process must be fully automated. A process that relies upon human interaction (whether planned or unplanned), is subject to human variability that can impact its success. In short, we do not want a deployment process that has humans coming along after it, to “clean it up.”

DevOps/Cloud-Native Live! Boston

Thus a key principle of DevOps, is that it becomes “the singular path to production.” We want all changes going in to production to have gone through our DevOps systems and processes. Our goal becomes to reduce and eliminate human reliance in every interaction. As an example, we automate test execution, then test evaluation, then test gated change progression. We use “smart” deployment technologies to overwrite what is different in the destination environment, forcing it into compliance with our stated version of changes that “should” be there.

In effect, we “step on” variations, overwriting them every time we initiate a deployment. This quickly teaches our freestyle engineers who make changes on the fly that their work will get “stepped on” with each new deployment (perhaps daily or hourly). Most engineers quickly get the hint that to preserve their work, they need to include it in the deployment process itself (updating the proper configuration file, or adding the right series of steps in the deployment execution automation itself). Otherwise, they will face a daily onslaught of repetitive tasks that inevitably will overwhelm them.

In this sense, a properly implemented DevOps system is “self-cleaning.” Paired with an executive mandate to have all change go into production through DevOps, another benefit emerges that may bring the CIO glee. Just a few years ago, IT organizations were bent on the idea of documenting change (therefore understanding it better) through the means of a configuration management database (CMDB). Those projects tended to be large, costly, and doomed to minimal success. Typically, the CMDB effort was great for 90 days after its first instantiation, then over six months its data became “suspect,” then after a year or two its data became prehistoric and close to useless.

The simple truth is, engineers (of nearly every variety) are toxically allergic to documentation. Asking engineers to have the human discipline of keeping up with documentation is like asking the sun not to shine. No matter what set of inducements is offered, or punishments threatened, the engineer simply remains toxically allergic to documentation and its maintenance (probably a DNA thing).

Industry tried to solve this problem by producing “discovery tools,” or tools that could determine automatically what our state of change was environment by environment. The idea being that if we ran discovery tools on regular intervals we could at least renew our CMDB baseline from time to time. It was an improvement, but discovery still lacks context for change and often is not thorough enough to generate real value beyond asset location and basic configuration.

Enter DevOps, which inherently has an artifact database capability to track versions of builds, deployments and releases over time. DevOps understands the need for artifact identification, articulation, compilation and history. Most early DevOps tooling has some form of it built into the products. But this is where a perfect storm becomes possible.

If our DevOps systems have achieved transparency; that is, if we are able to connect the context of change outlined from ideation (in the business requirements) through production release (including the history of testing, etc.) by version, we now have a great deal of wealth we could plug into a resurrected CMDB. And we could maintain the CMDB automatically (requiring no engineers to have to do manual things to keep it up to date). Our CMDB becomes a repository, or master repository of the artifacts of change we implement through DevOps.

This is more than just baseline or the ability to establish a “golden copy” of what change should look like. It is the ability to establish “relative” golden copies by development version while it progresses through environments of even highly complex SDLC systems. We have thus increased the value of a CMDB exponentially beyond its use in just production, but can integrate it, into the SDLC process and watch change become documented in real time no matter how fast or how often we move change.

This should be groundbreaking. Even if the CIO has burned all his funding and political capital on a former CMDB project that has had less-than-desirable results, he or she can salvage what is left of it and quietly use DevOps to resurrect the CMDB, making it an integrated step of moving change. Once the CIO has demonstrated success doing this, he or she can offer this reclamation project to the business and begin exploring ways of creating CMDB valuation to the business (beyond asset location and valuation).

What emerges is a DevOps-centric CMDB. DevOps, having become the singular path to production, has both insight and context into all change progression and simply updates the CMDB (master artifact repository) as needed automatically. In this way, an integrated CMDB becomes part of the DevOps continuum. And perhaps the greatest benefit or win is the simultaneous recognition of engineer’s allergy to documentation already baked into this sustainable solution. I would call that win-win—or, at least, a recognition of reality.

To continue the conversation, feel free to contact me.

 

Filed Under: Enterprise DevOps Tagged With: asset location, CMDB, devops, DevOps Continuum, documentation, engineering, maintenance, real time change

Sponsored Content
Featured eBook
The State of Open Source Vulnerabilities 2020

The State of Open Source Vulnerabilities 2020

Open source components have become an integral part of today’s software applications — it’s impossible to keep up with the hectic pace of release cycles without them. As open source usage continues to grow, so does the number of eyes focused on open source security research, resulting in a record-breaking ... Read More
« Trusting Continuous Delivery
Twistlock Announces Accelerated Business Momentum, Expands Executive Team Amidst Multiple Industry Accolades »

TechStrong TV – Live

Click full-screen to enable volume control
Watch latest episodes and shows

Upcoming Webinars

Accelerating Continuous Security With Value Stream Management
Monday, May 23, 2022 - 11:00 am EDT
The Complete Guide to Open Source Licenses 2022
Monday, May 23, 2022 - 3:00 pm EDT
Building a Successful Open Source Program Office
Tuesday, May 24, 2022 - 11:00 am EDT

Latest from DevOps.com

DevOps Institute Releases Upskilling IT 2022 Report 
May 18, 2022 | Natan Solomon
Creating Automated GitHub Bots in Go
May 18, 2022 | Sebastian Spaink
Is Your Future in SaaS? Yes, Except …
May 18, 2022 | Don Macvittie
Apple Allows 50% Fee Rise | @ElonMusk Fans: 70% Fake | Microsoft Salaries up by 100%?
May 17, 2022 | Richi Jennings
Making DevOps Smoother
May 17, 2022 | Gaurav Belani

Get The Top Stories of the Week

  • View DevOps.com Privacy Policy
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Download Free eBook

DevOps: Mastering the Human Element
DevOps: Mastering the Human Element

Most Read on DevOps.com

15 Ways Software Becomes a Cyberthreat
May 13, 2022 | Anas Baig
Top 3 Requirements for Next-Gen ML Tools
May 13, 2022 | Jervis Hui
Why Over-Permissive CI/CD Pipelines are an Unnecessary Evil
May 16, 2022 | Vladi Sandler
Apple Allows 50% Fee Rise | @ElonMusk Fans: 70% Fake | Micro...
May 17, 2022 | Richi Jennings
Making DevOps Smoother
May 17, 2022 | Gaurav Belani

On-Demand Webinars

DevOps.com Webinar ReplaysDevOps.com Webinar Replays
  • Home
  • About DevOps.com
  • Meet our Authors
  • Write for DevOps.com
  • Media Kit
  • Sponsor Info
  • Copyright
  • TOS
  • Privacy Policy

Powered by Techstrong Group, Inc.

© 2022 ·Techstrong Group, Inc.All rights reserved.