CI Family Changes and Snapshots

Managing Configuration Items › Versioning › CI Versioning Management › CI Family Changes and Snapshots

CI Family Changes and Snapshots

Family changes can affect a snapshot of a CI.

A snapshot includes the following different kinds of attributes:

Common attributes
Family-specific attributes

When you change the family of a CI, the following snapshot changes occurs:

Family-specific attributes associated with the CI change.
Snapshot details reflect the family at the time of the snapshot.

The family of a CI determines the attributes of the CI. If you change a family-specific attribute and then change the family of the CI, the result is a CI that no longer possesses the family-specific attribute you changed. Changing the family of a CI has no impact on its common attributes.

Example: Change the Family Associated with a CI

This example shows how CI family changes affect a snapshot of a CI.

Time	Status/Changes
0	The CI is in Family1.
1	One Family1-specific attribute value is changed.
2	Several common attribute values are changed.
3	The CI's family is changed from Family1 to Family2. When this occurs, all Family1-specific attributes become unavailable to this CI.
4	One Family2-specific attribute value is changed.
5	Several common attributes are changed.
6	The CI family is changed back to Family1. When this occurs, all Family2-specific attribute values become unavailable to this CI, but previous Family1-specific attribute values are restored.
7	Several common attributes are changed.
8	One Family1-specific attribute is changed.

In the example, a snapshot at Time=7 does not contain information from the changes made at Times 3 or 4. Those changes represent changes made to Family2-specific attributes.

Tell Technical Publications how we can improve this information