Data Accessibility from the UCMDB Browser: How IT Benefits in a Variety of Use Cases

In this complex world we work in, every role or persona in technology uses a variety of applications for their day-to-day job to address different data problems or analysis. In this context, data makes the IT world go round and round for the business.

 

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For example, an ITSM person accesses data within IT Service Management tools, a DBA accesses specific DB management tools and the data within, server administrators access their OS management tools for virtualization of infrastructure, or a security expert uses an enterprise security tool. In each of these use cases, quick and easy access to data is essential, if not critical, to the success of their organization.

 

While these tools are important in their respective domains, not one provides a broader solution for accessing IT data in a shared and trusted manner. Decentralized tool strategies involve having many IT personas working within their silos and tools, yet many contain overlapping elements and data.

 

In order to close this gap and to support complex data sharing across IT silos, organizations must pull together a master source of shared data which is reconciled into a single-source-of-truth. To give everyone, regardless of their IT role, access to that shared master IT data, IT also needs to provide a simple, intuitive interface with little to no learning curve required to use it effectively.

 

And so enters the UCMDB Browser with its simple, intuitive capability to access shared IT data and make your IT world more understandable.  Enjoy total access to applications, servers, databases, and the network infrastructure in physical or virtualized environments, from on-premise and off-premise systems. View powerful displays of critical data for decision-making such as impact simulation, policies and incidents, requests for change, problems, monitoring status, security status and defects.

 

With the UCMDB Browser in play, we have three use cases or scenarios by which the UCMDB Browser can help your IT world run more smoothly, thus saving you valuable time and frustration.

 

 

Scenario #1

 

As an Application Owner you are responsible for the performance of your applications and you have just received escalation that an application’s performance is unusually slow.

 

What options do you have with the UCMDB Browser to identify the root cause for this issue?

 

One immediate option is to bring up the UCMDB Browser and find your application under the most visited CIs since you visit it quite often. You review the overview screen populated by all your widgets. Within here they show you basic information about your application, including policy status. There is also within your application domain both a graph of the number of changes which have occurred recently, along with requests for change statuses (past, present and future). At first glance you notice a glaring red indicator on your formerly all-green policy bar. You immediately drill down on the widget and see that the policy breached periodically checks for sufficient disk space for the database.  

 

How could this have happened? No need to wonder too much, just switch to the history widget. A line chart displays the number of changes that occurred per day under the application scope. The peak you see for today identifies a change. Click on the peak and the widget will display any differences in the application that occurred since yesterday.

 

It is within here that you then see that the database has a new SQL file which is probably the root cause for your problem. It may be related to a planned change request, the details of which can be viewed in the Change Request widget, or it may be caused by an unplanned change. You immediately call the owner (their name found using the stakeholder widget for your application) of the database to solve your issue.

 

 

Scenario # 2

 

As the Change Manager for the IT Department of your company, you need to analyze an upcoming Request for Change.

 

What options do you have with the UCMDB Browser to understand proactively how this change could impact your organization?

 

You obviously want to verify the current configuration and run an impact simulation which would demonstrate how your change will affect others. This is easy to do with the UCMDB.  Since the ticketing system is already integrated with the UCMDB Browser and with the UCMDB, you can go directly from your ticketing system to the CI you are about to change. 

 

From here you can validate the CI using the properties widget (which encompasses all of the CI’s properties, memory, CPU, OS patch level, etc.) and then simulate the risk of a change to the CI on the entire organization. The impact simulation runs automatically whenever you show the CI so all you have to do is watch the impact bar to view the CIs that will be affected and at what level.

 

Obtaining an understanding for this type of impact is that simple and easy to do!

 

 

 Scenario # 3

 

As the Database Administrator for your companies’ IT Department, you have just read an article about security risk found in a specific version of a database application.

 

What options do you have within the UCMDB Browser to investigate the risk to see if it applies to your environment?

 

Well, what you don’t need to worry about is how to find the database application, verify its version, and identify which business applications use it. Once again, the UCMDB Browser is capable of this kind of information.

 

To identify the databases just type “all ABC database with version 13.0.3” into the browser. 100 results are returned. Now what? Which ones are more important than the next? The UCMDB Browser can provide this for you. Execute a search for “applications running on ABC database with version 13.0.3”. A list of business applications pops up allowing you to check their level of criticality. You can even perform a search by including the addition of the level of criticality such as “applications with criticality greater than 5 running on ABC database with version 13.0.3.”

 

A natural language search engine was introduced in the UCMDB Browser for UCMDB version 10 and greater. This enables the customer to extend the language in various ways such as by accommodating class, attribute synonyms, configuring a date format, choice of which attributes to search for, very strong topological search, and much, much more.

 

With the HP UCMDB Browser, it is easier than ever to make sense of complex data across many domains within Information Technology.

 

Do you have the UCMDB Browser installed as a part of your overall ITSM and CMS environment? We want to know what you find most useful or beneficial about it for your organization. Join the conversation on LinkedIn or tweet us @HPITSM.

 

Thanks!

Ido Niv
Service and Portfolio Management R&D, HP Software