Managing Changes › CA Configuration Automation Overview

CA Configuration Automation Overview

CA Configuration Automation is a CA Server Automation option that provides management of configuration changes and configuration change detection for the resources in your data center. These resources can be systems such as servers; applications such as software components; and networks, such as IP subnets. Events are generated to indicate changes to network and server level resources.

Discovery provides discovery and classification of all entities (new nodes and subnets) in your IP network. Only Discovery can add or delete systems from the Management Database. If you add systems from CA Configuration Automation directly, use the synchronize function to discover all new systems in CA Configuration Automation and add them to the Management Database. However, if you delete systems from CA Configuration Automation directly, CA Server Automation attempts to add them back in the next recording cycle.

You can have multiple CA Configuration Automation servers in your environment and CA Server Automation can connect to all of them, collect the data, and process it all in one location. You can decide which CA Configuration Automation server manages which individual server, but each system in CA Server Automation can only have one CA Configuration Automation source.

You can create and use up to three standard snapshots (gold, silver, and bronze) to compare servers. A standard snapshot has the correct configuration and settings for a particular environment, as determined by the administrator. After you designate standard snapshots, you can use them to run comparisons on servers and view the results. The comparison results show you the components that are installed on each server and the differences between the two servers.

For change detection, you can create baseline snapshots to determine changes on a server over time. A server can only have one baseline snapshot. After you have designated a baseline snapshot, you can run change detection to see what changes have occurred. Change detection and system comparisons also generate events.