Glossary

CMDB

Also called: Configuration Management Database · configuration database

The repository of configuration items and the relationships between them, which is what turns an incident into a question you can answer.

A CMDB — Configuration Management Database — records the components that make up services and, more importantly, how they relate to each other. Its value is not the inventory but the graph: which service a failing server supports, which users that service reaches, what changed on it recently.

A CMDB shared with the ticket is worth considerably more than one integrated with it. When inventory and case live in the same system, a technician handling an incident sees the equipment, its software, its assignment and its warranty in the same record. When they live in two products joined by an integration project, they drift apart, and the drift shows up precisely when someone needs the answer urgently.

Related terms

Configuration item

A governable element that supports services and processes: applications, assets, technology components or critical resources.

Entitlement

What the organization is licensed to use — contracts, quantities and conditions — as opposed to what a scan finds installed.

ITSM

The practice of managing IT as a set of services with owners, commitments and evidence, rather than as a collection of technology.

SLA

A committed and measured level of service, meaningful only when the commitment is calculated against real operations and can be explained.