Using the Integration

The Configuration Management Database (CMDB) in Universal CMDB contains information about all your CIs (servers, applications, hosts, and so on) and their relationships. CIs can vary widely in complexity, size, and type, from an entire system (including all hardware, software, and documentation) to a single module or minor hardware component.

For example, the CMDB contains information about which CIs are affected when other CIs stop functioning or have operational problems.

You generally perform impact analysis as follows:

• Select the CIs that you suspect might be affected by the planned software change.

  Tip: We recommend using CI names in Universal CMDB that will be meaningful to you in PPM.

• Run impact analysis on the selected CIs. Impact analysis analyzes the relationships among the selected CIs in the CMDB, and generates a report showing the CIs that will be affected by the planned change.

• Run impact analysis at additional points. Examples:

  • Before approving a change, to forecast the effect that the change will have on your system.

  • After the change has been created, in case your system infrastructure has changed since the previous impact analysis was performed.