Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Tying your Inventory/Assests back to Applications

As I have done many Data Center Migrations, I have found one common thread on the initial engagements....
There is a disparity amongst the support teams and the application owners as to what they call their applications. Support folks tend to shorten or give acronyms to systems and the application teams have their own names as well. This causes some problems within the change management arena as well as documentation. My suggestions are as follows:
  • Standardize on the names of systems within your data center
  • Standardize on all potential classification area's (ie. locations, support groups, Operating systems, function, etc...)
  • Verify that every device ties back to a common system name.
  • Within your system documentation you could then track:
    •  System Name - Common or Highest Level System Name
    • Component: Module or Subsystem Name associated with System (Blank ok)
    • Function : Type of device (Websvr, DBSvr, Storage, AppSvr, citrix svr)
    • Servicing Location: What locations or Enterprise does this device support?
By doing this you are on your way to having a healthy change management system with accurate information regarding systems and their associated owners, stakeholders, and other upstream or downstream devices/systems.
This is also imperitive in order to have a proper dependency matrix (I'll cover that in another post).

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