Integrating with CA CMDB › How to Set Up the Integration

How to Set Up the Integration

Processes and procedures that you need to do or verify to enable the integration between CA CMDB and CA Service Catalog:

1. Ensure that CA Service Catalog, Accounting Component (if used), and CA CMDB are installed, configured, and running.
2. If you plan to use Accounting Component, ensure that it is installed, configured, and running.
3. Ensure that you verify the MDB version compatibility for all CA products that you plan to integrate, including CA CMDB r12.1, r12, or r11.2, or the CA CMDB component of CA Service Desk Manager r12.5 (whichever is applicable).

   Typically, we recommend that CA Service Catalog and all CA products that integrate with it share the same CA Management Database (CA MDB). CA Service Catalog embeds CA MDB r1.5. To integrate CA Service Catalog with other CA products that embed CA MDB r1.5 or CA MDB r1.0.4, verify the CA MDB version compatibility for your integrations.

4. Review the level of maturity of each product in your environment. Major tasks include the following.
   • Review your organization's standard process and procedures, especially external standards that you must follow, such as ITIL, ISO, COBIT, CORA, and so forth.

     ITIL is especially applicable because both CA CMDB and CA Service Catalog support ITIL concepts.

   • In CA CMDB, review the configuration items in the Business Service class of the Enterprise Services family. Of the initial default configuration items, these are considered to be the most likely candidates for integration with CA Service Catalog services. Remember, however, that you can associate any configuration item or items with one or more CA Service Catalog services.
   • In CA Service Catalog, review the existing services.
   • In both, review the existing associations if any.
5. Review the key terms for the integration.
6. Review the types of association between services and configuration items that you can create.
7. Review the associations that already exist, if any; for details, see View Associations Between Services and Configuration Items.
8. Determine any new Catalog-CA CMDB associations that make sense for your business. Ask these questions:
   • Which existing configuration items need to be associated with one or more services? Do those services already exist, or do you need to create new ones?
   • Which existing services need to be associated with one or more configuration items? Do those configuration items already exist, or do you need to create new ones?
   • Do you want to populate the CA CMDB service by service?
   • Have you started or finished populating the CA CMDB, using the guidelines for doing so in the CA CMDB documentation? If neither, do you want to start or resume by seeding CA CMDB with a small number of mission critical applications and business services?
   • Have you checked your organization's business continuity plan to determine which business services and respective components in your infrastructure are critical?

   For details about populating CA CMDB, see the CA CMDB documentation.

   As you answer the questions, consider the following factors:

   • Keep in mind that the goal of all associations is to use IT to support your business needs.
   • While the associations are created only from services to configuration items, thinking about the integration from both perspectives can help ensure that you cover all important considerations.
   • If applicable, begin thinking about associations starting from the perspective of the product that is most mature in your environment. For example, if you have a well developed CA CMDB implementation but have just started implementing CA Service Catalog, then CA CMDB is the more mature product. It is likely most efficient for you to start by viewing your existing configuration items in the Business Service class of the Enterprise Services family and determining which ones could use CA Service Catalog services, to better serve your business needs. In this model, it is likely that you will first create the needed services and next create the associations.

     Conversely, if you have mature services but your CA CMDB implementation is just starting, you may want to create configuration items corresponding to the services. For example, for critical services connected to service level agreements, you may want to create configuration items based on the hardware or other infrastructure needed to support the CA Service Catalog services.

     For example, you may define your email application and server as configuration items and associate them to an email service in CA Service Catalog. Similarly, you may also associate that email application and server with a service for requesting Blackberry units and subscriptions.

   • If you are using Accounting Component, consider creating and associating configuration items with the services related to your most important subscriptions and most important financial reporting items.
9. Create any new configuration items that you need for the integration.

   For details, see the CA CMDB documentation.

10. Create any new services that you need for the integration.

    For details, see the Administration Guide.

    Note: When a service is copied or inherited, its associations to CI s are not copied.

11. Consider service level agreements (SLAs).

    Whenever the availability of services is affected, the SLA may have a significant effect on impact analysis. For example, if a server used by a service that your company provides is down, you company's ability to meet the SLA obligations to your customers may be affected. Therefore, you want to set up your service-to-configuration item associations to include services and computers involved in meeting SLA obligations.

    For details about how CA Service Catalog uses SLAs, see the Administration Guide.

12. Associate services to configuration items. These associations are from CA Service Catalog to CA CMDB. These associations may be one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, or many-to-many. You associate a CA Service Catalog service ID with a CA CMDB UUID (not a logical ID).

    For example, consider the New Hire Onboarding service, which is one of many services supplied with CA Service Catalog. It is intended to be used for requesting office equipment needed by a newly hired employee, such as a desktop or laptop computer, an office or cubicle, a telephone, email service, network access rights, and so forth. You could create a configuration item for each of these assets and associate them to the service. In this case, the association is many to one (many configuration items to one service).

13. Using the CA CMDB Visualizer, leverage the analysis tools of CA CMDB, such as impact analysis and root cause analysis. For details, see How to Leverage Information from Analysis Tools.

Key Terms

CA Configuration Management Database (CA CMDB) is a functional data repository that unifies and simplifies the management of configuration information. CA CMDB consolidates and reconciles disparate sources of IT-related data in the context of business priorities. CA CMDB provides visibility into configuration item information such as resource attributes, relationships and dependencies.

Configuration items form the basis of configuration management solutions. Typically, a configuration item is a collection of objects related to the specific functionality of a larger system. Examples of these objects may be requirements, code, documentation, models, and other files.

Visualizer is the CA component that CMDB uses to provide a unified graphical view of relationships between configuration items and inter-dependencies in support of business processes. It helps you determine which CA Service Catalog services are connected to which CA CMDB configuration items.