Models

A model is an IT product type and the purchase name of the hardware and additional IT assets that you own or plan to acquire. Define models first in the repository for each asset and product that you want to manage using CA APM. After you define a model in the repository, the model acts like a product template for the physical assets that are created. The assets inherit the properties or attributes from the model, such as the name, asset family, and manufacturer. By using this template, a single model can represent many assets and the model information is common to many assets. However, each asset record contains information specific to that asset.

A model can be any of the following examples:

A computer model such as Dell Optiplex GX270 and Dell Precision 410.
A hardware component such as 104+ keyboard, 256 MB-RAM, Monitors, and Intel Pentium processor.

In these model examples, you only need one model record for the Dell Precision 410 computer, no matter how many of these computers you own.

The CA APM repository contains two types of records that describe the basic characteristics of IT products. The record types are models and assets.

A model describes a product type that you have purchased in the past or will possibly purchase in the future.
An asset, which is based on a model, describes a product that you own or plan to acquire. You can create many assets based on a single model, and the new asset inherits the model attributes. For example, if you own 100 laptops of a particular model, you would have one model record describing the laptop, and 100 asset records describing the individual laptops.

You may have some products that you only want to manage as models in a general sense, such as the following examples:

Standard, relatively inexpensive computer components in a configuration. For example, you can record a particular type of network card as a model. This model lets you determine which systems are using that type of network card without having to track details about individual network cards of that type. Other similar components include SCSI hard drives, memory, graphics cards, CD or DVD devices, and so forth.
Products that your company purchases from different vendors at different times. This additional information lets you track pricing information for those products and select the best price at procurement.

You can retrieve information from the repository about any object by searching. After you search, you can select, view, and manage individual object records from the search results.

More information:

Models and Assets