By Dick Stark
On Wednesday, RightStar presented a webinar, “Discovery & Relationship Mapping with BMC ADDM.” ADDM is starting to heat up with more and more customers, not just implementing Remedy, but ADDM, due to the combined value that both products together provide.
In fact at one RightStar customer, ADDM has made a significant difference, not just by identifying what’s in their data center or on the network, but how applications are mapped to related hardware and software. For example, ADDM creates all computer systems OS (Windows, Linux, Unix), CPU, RAM, IP, MAC, software instances, status (Deployed or Down), entries and their relationships, as well as network devices and printers. Additionally, ADDM populates its data into the CMDB (Hostname, Manufacturer, Model, etc.) A physical inventory then updates the physical location–company, site, floor, room, status (Received, Deployed, Down and End of Life), as well as, adds disk drives and blade chassis/blade server items and their relationships.
The result is not just improved asset management effectiveness and a reduction in cost, but risk mitigation when making changes, due to a better understanding of the change and its impact to the affected underlying infrastructure. Additionally, RightStar consultants fully integrated ADDM into the CMDB. Using ADDM, all newly discovered, newly removed (not seen for a minimum 7 days) and changed (moved) assets are tracked and compared to see if a Change Request was indeed created for these installs and moves. If a Change Request was not created, an alert is sent to the administrator to investigate.
There are several other reasons why ADDM is such a good complement to Remedy:
ADDM is built on the Atrium architecture. Through the CMDB, discovery data automatically maps to CMDB classes, for example, operating systems, CPU, and applications. Additionally, through continuous synchronization, the CMDB is always kept-up-to-date.
Collaborative Application Mapping makes the creation of self-maintaining application maps simple by providing a workflow tool that makes it easy to obtain information about business applications. Using these maps, IT can better understand how applications and infrastructure work together to deliver the services that organizations depend upon.
The ADDM Extended Data Pack includes two reference libraries. The software pack provides dates for software end of life, end of support for operating systems and software. The hardware pack provides information on physical and thermal characteristics of hardware.
Understanding complex application dependencies is a fundamental requirement for all strategic IT initiatives. With ADDM, IT has the necessary insight to make the right planning choices, safely manage changes, prioritize support and understand the real costs of IT.
