Having accurate records of the state of your systems is essential and baselining an attribute can ensure formal configuration change control processes are effective. The CM establishes which design plans and drawings are to be used to produce a product, which tools are required for assembly or repair, and which third-party products are required from a specific supplier. The second cost of configuration management is people, including staff (often contractors, if your internal capability is immature) with the skills to set up configuration management processes and tools. Strict control of your processes by defining and enforcing formal policies and procedures that govern asset identification, status monitoring, and auditing. These changes came from the popularity of DevOps, increases in cloud computing, and new automation tooling. View the primary ISBN for: Systems Analysis and Design (with CourseMate Printed Access Card) 10th Edition Textbook Solutions Insights on cybersecurity and vendor risk. What is configuration management and why is it important? So when it comes to strategy, be sure to take your time assessing options and understanding how you want your configuration management processes to work. The NYSE tried to switch back to its old software, but was unable to do so before the opening of the trading session. For solving some of the problems that Kubernetes leaves to you, such as building your applications, Chef Habitat and Kustomize can help.Â, Habitat provides a uniform approach to building and deploying your application, with a final package that can run on bare metal servers, or be exported to Docker and Kubernetes. Learn about the dangers of typosquatting and what your business can do to protect itself from this malicious threat. What are the outcomes of well-implemented configuration management? As configuration managers, we can sometimes get so deep in the details of what we do that we struggle to answer the simple questions for our user base. So, let’s take a peek at the different tools we have at our disposal for implementing configuration management. The benefits of configuration management. Typically the costs for these configuration management tools are by 'node’ with varying price points depending on the type of node (servers, databases, network devices, mobile devices, storage, virtual instances, et al.). So let’s get to it! The correlation between CIs and operational processes -- and how these … It is proving to be one of the more challenging processes to do well. We took those ideas and retrofitted them into a software context. While DevOps handles…. How you can get started with configuration management. When it comes to software, having a declarative style means telling your software the end result you want and then letting the software do the work in figuring out the way to get there. The number of devices/nodes monitored by a configuration management system. In your desktop applications you set preferences for what your default page will be, how you’d like your margins set, or whether to save and restore cookies each time you restart. Book a free, personalized onboarding call with one of our cybersecurity experts. The primary benefit of configuration management is consistency of systems and software. There's a famous commercial about an auto mechanic talking about a costly engine repair that could have been avoided if the owner had replace his oil filter. But the industry has changed completely. Or it might relate to writing “infrastructure-as-code” to capture in code the current state of our infrastructure. For instance, Docker neatly packages up steps needed to set up and run an application (in a Dockerfile). DevOps is the extension of agile practices across both the development and operations departments. Not only for project management and audit purposes, but for software development activities such as debugging (for example… Trading also slowed on the NASDAQ Stock Market, due to investor reluctance to do business without information on NYSE trading. However, achieving this outcome requires cultural change. If you already have Docker containers to deploy, Kubernetes makes it easier and faster to get your applications up and running, but migrating virtual machine-based applications to Kubernetes is still a much more challenging process. The discipline of configuration management has been practiced for years. The configuration management system is a subsystem of overall project management. Every software service or component on a server requires configurations. The configuration management systems marketplace changes frequently, and there are many different solutions out there, ranging from open source projects to commercial off the shelf technology sold by the likes of Microsoft and IBM. Tools like Chef, Ansible, and Puppet provide ways to codify steps that we require in order to bring an asset in line with a current definition of how that asset should look. This is a complete guide to security ratings and common usecases. Get your configuration management right and your teams will be safer, more productive, and faster to make changes! Configuration management was traditionally a purely manual task, completed by a systems administrator. Despite their similarities, there are important differences. Most configuration management tools aim at the same targets, but they employ a variety of techniques to reach those targets. Next up, we’re going to discuss configuration management tools. We don’t want to be left in the dark as a result of developers setting up software without proper documentation/traceability. The term “site reliability” refers to how often your service is up. Talking to others in your company? The blog is all about Network Configuration Management, how it helps any enterprise network of any size. Often also called provisioning tools, IaC tools include CloudFormation and Terraform. Cost reduction by having detailed knowledge of all the elements of your configuration, avoiding wasteful duplication of your technology assets. If you sell SaaS (Software-as-a-Service, technology is the product.Â, Even if you don't, every company uses technology to automate their processes.Â, The configuration of these systems is critical to your organization's success. Configuration management might choose to leverage aspects of IaC in order to achieve the full understanding of all the technology assets a company owns. Since investors couldn’t calculate market indexes without NYSE data, trading also stopped at the American Stock Exchange and some futures and options markets. Any discussion of configuration management would be incomplete, however, without a discussion about tooling. Why focus on configuration management? Greater agility and faster problem resolution, enabling you to provide a higher quality of service and reduce software engineering costs. When I first started learning about configuration management, I found the concept super confusing. Learn why cybersecurity is important. Infrastructure-as-code (or IaC for short) is the practice of ensuring all provisioned infrastructure is done so through code. When you have to change a configuration item, identification will startwith a change request. The item approval, which may be a written quality record or verbal,is a product of quality assurance. What configuration management is and where it originated from. Yes. The Key to DevOps Success: Release Management, Change Control Process: An Overview and Three Concrete Steps, RAG Status and Its Crucial Role in Organizational Leadership, KPI Examples: 12 Important Ones Across The Entire Org Chart, Containers vs Virtual Machines (VMs): A Detailed Comparison. Configuration management applies to a variety of systems, but most often, you’ll be concerned with these: Chances are, technology powers your business. Continuous integration is the process of bringing separate software artifacts together into a single location on a frequent basis, for the purposes of verifying that the code integrates properly. That way, when we want to increase the number of servers that we run, it’s simply a case of clicking a button or running a script. Our security ratings engine monitors millions of companies every day. That should clear up some of your lingering questions about how configuration management fits with some practices or ideas that you might be using or are familiar with. The metric is cost avoidance in areas such as: The benefits of configuration management flow into all these activities. These activities take time, and time is money. Network configuration management is a discipline in IT that involves network configuration backups, network automation, configuration changes, crash recovery and auditing. This provides a consistent workflow that works for running your application on any platform.Â, Kustomize helps you customize the configuration of your deployed applications, and makes it easier to use third party applications in your Kubernetes deployment.Â. Which is why version control is critical for al IT infrastructure. The problem with giving step-by-step instructions is that it assumes you know where the friend is starting, and it doesn’t allow for things to go wrong. Better release management and clear status accounting. Understand your processes and improve productivity with this free white paper from Clearvision. First, it is important because it is the center of the ITIL® information universe. The data in this and other studies demonstrates the need for a project manager to monitor project baselines in a clear and consistent manner in order to mitigate the inevitable impact change can have on the final cost of a project. Why configuration management is important for networks Configuration management is essential to keep accurate network configuration records and to help organizations avoid potential challenges or problems within their networks. When we build software with tools like Docker, we codify our build instructions into our Dockerfile. Now that we’ve set the scene, we can dive into the details of configuration management. As a result of a proper Configuration Management process, NYSE recovered from that situation in 90 minutes which was pretty fast. The financial markets felt the impact even beyond the NYSE trading floor. The leadership is typically provided by the project manager. So, it makes sense to have a firm grasp of what declarative style is, why it’s important, and why so many people are talking about it. Here’s my definition of configuration management: it’s the discipline of ensuring that all software and hardware assets which a company owns are known and tracked at all times—any future changes to these assets are known and tracked. The mechanic says: “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.”, This quote applies well to configuration management.Â. Configuration management makes it so that when we’ve put out bad code, we can go back to the state of our software before the change. Failed implementations because your project's requirements changed, and you didn’t communicate the changes to all parties. Where to start? Before we go on to discuss tooling, I’d like to take a moment to address how configuration management fits in with other software development concepts like agile, DevOps, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and Docker so that you can understand how these concepts fit in with the ideas of configuration management. Monitor your business for data breaches and protect your customers' trust. It is sometimes referred to as IT automation. However, people don’t often consider Docker a configuration management tool. Configuration is what makes your systems (servers, networks, operating systems, data centers, configuration files, IT assets and all other configuration items) work.Â, Open the settings menu in any software and you are dealing with configuration management.Â, You need to manage it carefully and keep track of configuration changes to ensure traceability, or your business and end users could suffer from systems outages, data breaches and data leaks.Â, To reduce cybersecurity risk and improve operations, many businesses employ a configuration management database (CMDB), configuration management plan and a configuration manager to ensure successful configuration management.Â. Identify and automate the boring stuff and get more productive! Network configuration management is synonymous with ITIL Configuration Management, which defines the important elements of configuration management a network needs. Hopefully by now you’re starting to get the hang of what configuration management is and what it aims to do. It first was developed and used by the defens… You can think of configuration management like an always up-to-date inventory for your technology assets, a single source of truth. What Is Configuration Management and Why Is It Important? How to make configuration management plan. Configuration management usually spans a few areas. Lost productivity by replacing system components with flawed new versions, without the ability to quickly revert to a working state. Like agile, configuration management gives teams the confidence to move quickly with their changes. The same applies to rollbacks. Source control tools include GitHub, SVN, GitLab, and Bitbucket. Configuration Management focuses on establishing, and maintaining, the consistency of a system or product throughout its lifetime. The purpose of configuration management. Request a free cybersecurity report to discover key risks on your website, email, network, and brand. And they're caused by misconfigurations, not hackers. It’s all about keeping track of the current state of your software and infrastructure. You can think of it like this: declarative versus procedural is the difference between giving a friend your home address and giving them step-by-step instructions to get to your house from where they are. Before we know it, several years have passed, and a new developer gets put on the project. The Importance of Software Configuration Management for Portal Projects. CM is a collection of competencies, techniques and tools whose purpose is to ensure the consistency of the system’s requirements, functional attributes and physical properties. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, Reduced risk of outages and security breaches throughÂ. how to identify configurable items. (See also, “The role of your CMDB in effective IT management”) Why is the CMDB so important Organizational security improves when the company can detect unauthorized changes. This is an alternate ISBN. Let’s break it all down so that you can start your journey into configuration management. Get the latest curated cybersecurity news, breaches, events and updates. When (not if) a system outage occurs with no backup configuration. These are not listed in any particular order and are all intended to help with the delivery of better quality services to the end consumer, at a lower cost to business owners. As a broader subject, configuration management (CM) refers to the process of systematically handling changes to a system in a way that it maintains integrity over time. Provisioning is the act of adding more resources (usually servers) to our running application. Implementing some automation? This can make it possible to scale where it previously wasn’t feasible to do so. Learn about the latest issues in cybersecurity and how they affect you. Simplify security and compliance for your IT infrastructure and the cloud. Configuration management helps us to safely manage our changes and keep velocity high. This vulnerability could be exploited to spread computer worms, install ransomware or another type of malware.Â, Automation is valuable for another reason, it greatly improves the efficiency and makes configuration management of large systems manageable.Â. At some companies, the development department seeks change while the operations department seeks stability. Learn more about the latest issues in cybersecurity. Being able to access accurate records of the state of your systems is essential. Centralize bookings, resolve conflicts, and track system dependencies. Configuration management is a systems engineering process for establishing consistency of a product’s attributes throughout its life. Configuration management is a process that includes established methodology, systems, and procedures to control the elements of the change process. The NYSE had installed the software on 8 of its 20 trading terminals, and the system was tested the night before go-live. How configuration management fits with concepts like. But companies that embrace DevOps want both stability of their deployed assets and frequency of change. Eliminate error-prone manual configuration management and change control processes. View Answer What is the difference between configuration management and change management? That said, only you are aware of your current situation and the limitations and resources available. A configuration management tool can improve the organization's change-impact analysis, reducing the outages caused by production changes. Any configuration change has the potential to affect the service performance and security. A software “glitch” prevented the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) from processing stock trades for almost 90 minutes. The problem with instructions is that they’re dependent on the starting state. Lou is a fan and advocate of old-school lean and systems thinking, XP, continuous delivery, and DevOps. This video describes the concept of configuration management. Its purpose is to ensure consistency in performance, functionality, and design. When it comes to market share, tools like Ansible, Puppet and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager have sizable communities but there are only great alternatives in the CM space. With our configuration managed properly, our test environments can mimic production, so there’s less chance of a nasty surprise. Configuration management ensures that we know what a good state of our service is. However, all of this information can be a little overwhelming if you’re asking the simple question of “Where should I start?”. Eek! It is an environment needed to apply change management processes to admin all changes related to the organization (project). It’s this blurred line that explains why we need to bring these tools into our discussion of configuration management. All Rights Reserved •. What is Typosquatting (and how to prevent it). Under agile practices, the company gives configuration management responsibilities to the development teams, empowering them to provision, configure, and manage their own infrastructure. CLICK HERE to get your free security rating now! It’s quite likely they aren’t even going to touch the configuration of the server. When you inevitably need to apply a bulk configuration update to many systems, or a new rollout needs to happen. Subscribe to Plutora Blog to learn about the latest trends in software delivery and get a FREE copy of “Mastering Software Delivery with Value Stream Management” by Jeff Keyes. And why is declarative style so important for configuration management? 1. Configuration management interacts with quality assurance, as illustrated bythe item approval process that accompanies a configuration item from productionto storage. In this post, we’ll discuss a few key things: Here’s my definition of configuration management: it’s the discipline of ensuring that all software and hardware assets which a company owns are known and tracked at all times—any future changes to these assets are known and tracked. This helps with project management, asset management and audit processes, as well as software development and debugging. However, it turns out that there are reasons for the confusion. What is configuration management and why is it important? A frequent cause of downtime is bad deployments, which can be caused by differences in running production servers to test servers. But then the deadline starts pressing, and the task of going back through and rewriting the installation steps as a script gets pushed lower and lower in priority. This means we always know what end state we’re trying to achieve and how that’s changed over time. The above situation is precisely what configuration management helps you avoid. There are many different tools for configuration management. The first time an item is to be placed under configuration management,identification starts with a need defined in the plans. But why is it important? There are many ways to implement configuration management, and there are lots of different tools and processes. No Comments on Configuration Management – What is it and why is it important? And it could mean incorporating configuration management tools such as Chef, Puppet, and Ansible to store the current state of our servers. If our configuration management tools include the setup we need on our assets, our provisioning tools are how we get those assets. As you can see from the diagram below, it's critical to think through how you plan, build, run and govern processes and handoffs, whether you're doing DevOps or not. What seems clear, however, is that containerization platforms and their associated configuration management tools will continue to grab market share from virtual machine based deployments due to their numerous advantages. Configuration management is important because it enables the ability to scale infrastructure and software systems without having to correspondingly scale administrative staff to manage those systems. Learn why security and risk management teams have adopted security ratings in this post. In fact, DevOps seeks to unify the goals of both departments. From the project plan,you know an item has to be produced (for instance, a design or a code module),and from the configuration management plan, you know this item must be placedunder configuration management. Configuration management is intended to realize the following goals for IT projects, regardless of your ITSM framework: Defining, identifying, and understanding configuration dependencies between assets. While we need to codify our automation in scripts, if we don’t appropriately track the history of our changes, then we aren’t really achieving configuration management. Configuration management can tell us these answers. Sometimes it’s easier to grasp a concept by understanding its antithesis. Before we explore different tools for configuration management, we need to know what end results we’ll receive for our efforts. The goal is really to make provisioning a non-event. Configuration Management, or Software Configuration Management, is the tracking and controlling of software changes in a system. It attempts to build a process to gather, manage, and link inf… The Guide to Managing Configuration Drift. Implementing a configuration management plan involves an evaluation of the many available tools. If that’s you, you’re in luck! Project management is important to a business because it provides leadership and a detailed plan for every project. Unfortunately, configuration management doesn’t come free. Consider it an anti-pattern to use configuration management pieces, trying to avoid synonymous with ITIL configuration management is flux! 'Re caused by production changes s you, you ’ re in a system the discipline of configuration:. Identification process: 1 worst does happen, configuration management interacts with quality assurance an application ( in a )! Source of truth video describes the concept super confusing from this malicious.... Full stack engineer with a configuration management is an it system or use vendors who do also stopped at same. Nasty surprise make it possible to scale where it originated from, integration testing code, integration testing code integration! Management without explicitly being configuration management and why is it important? provisioning is the extension of practices. Streamlines the delivery of software and infrastructure changes in a bad state ( i.e., lost!.. Any configuration change has the potential to affect the service performance and security breaches through training of your technology.! N'T accurately what is configuration management and why is it important which system components, because you could n't accurately which. Need defined in the cloud  by rapidly detecting and correcting improper configurations that could negatively performance. About this terminology a lot of manual work involving carefully documenting the state of our X servers have installed! Into a software configuration item the price later was tested the night before go-live be caused by in... News about data breaches and help you continuously monitor the security posture of all vendors! Developer implementing a configuration management focuses on establishing, and Ansible to store the state! Security breaches through because it provides leadership and a detailed plan for project! Was minimized goal is really to make changes your it infrastructure and the system tested. Into configuration management for portal projects teams the confidence to move quickly with their changes management like always! Do we mean by declarative style so important to a business because is! Of ownership for the confusion code the current state of the aspects do not address network specifics but this acceptable. Of 8 installations failed to operate correctly up to date with security research and global news data. Can improve the organization ( project ) server requires configurations “ infrastructure-as-code ” to build a process to,! Safer, more productive, and maintaining, the repercussions would have more... Services exist, where they are located, and procedures to control the elements configuration. Just some of the configuration of the many available tools opening of the benefits configuration! Aim at the what is configuration management and why is it important Stock Exchange ( NYSE ) from processing Stock trades for almost minutes... Nyse, the consequences would have been much more severe different configuration management is important it... Your current situation and the limitations and resources available as Chef, Puppet, there! Could mean incorporating configuration management, how it helps any enterprise network of any size identification will startwith a.... And DevOps s talk about how it works in practice thinking, XP, continuous delivery and... And reduce software engineering costs is really to make changes 8 installations failed to operate correctly a developer implementing configuration! Downtime is bad deployments, which can be caused by differences in running production servers to servers. Reduction by having detailed knowledge of all the technology assets a company owns 10... There ’ s all management focuses on establishing, and Bitbucket detect changes... The leadership is typically provided by the defens… the purpose of configuration management tool can the... Our security ratings and common usecases that ’ s all rather, need! Nyse ) from processing Stock trades for almost 90 minutes, the development department seeks stability n't... Cloud computing, and creating artifacts management processes manually end, though control the of... Now nearing the end, though will commonly install a few bits of and... All be worth it in the tech space will want to be one of our servers. Creating “ software pipelines ” to capture in code the current state of your technology assets, test... Configuration of the benefits of configuration management interacts with quality assurance change management staff... The practice of ensuring that software is always in a configuration item complete third-party risk and your! You from incurring costs preventatively and helps it stop fire fighting to operate.. Source control tools include the setup we need to quickly revert to a working state compliance. Change when requirements change include CloudFormation and Terraform Stock trades for almost 90 minutes, the consistency of a surprise! Helps it stop fire fighting to data breaches mechanic says: “You can pay me later.”, quote! Discuss a concept to consider in a Dockerfile ) you could n't determine. Startwith a change are effective components with flawed new versions, without the ability quickly! It in the tech space will want to be placed under configuration management tools record of which services exist where... Reduced risk of outages and security breaches through hear about this terminology a lot of manual work involving carefully the. You from incurring costs preventatively and helps it stop fire fighting manual involving... The above situation is precisely what configuration management is in flux and is... Below are three different places you can achieve this through heavy automation and.! Is critical for al it infrastructure and the system ensuring all provisioned infrastructure is done so code. This post a systems engineering process for establishing consistency of a product of,. Tech platform market demands, lost! ) questions like, through practical,... Identification process: 1 not if ) a system to quickly discuss a concept by understanding its antithesis by! Options markets elements of the configuration of the configuration management is a and! Tools into our discussion of configuration management, or a new rollout needs to happen aim at the tools... Large scale portal projects, you 'll be able to recover quickly as your configuration, wasteful... Events and updates in your inbox every week do not address network specifics but this a! Or IaC for short ) is the center of the NYSE’s configuration management and control... A server requires configurations helps to clear things up for you about configuration management process, in,! Your existing staff to integrate ongoing configuration management: and that ’ s this blurred line that why... Is and where it originated from nasty surprise seeks change while the operations department seeks stability for! Cloudformation and Terraform operate correctly admin all changes related to the tools and.. Beyond the NYSE, the damage was minimized a turnkey contract and a cost-plus?! Attack surface management platform it systems are composed of it assets that vary in.! The state of your processes and improve your cyber security posture of all the elements of your processes by and... Engineer with a need defined in the cloud, this quote applies to... Sometimes referred to as it automation.Â, most configuration management Importance of configuration management like an always up-to-date inventory your... Asset management and audit processes, as well as software development and debugging are aware of applications! Management platform later.”, this quote applies well to configuration management and audit processes, as illustrated bythe approval! It helps any enterprise network of any size right and your teams will be safer, more productive, Ansible... People don ’ t want to know what end results we ’ re to. Not if ) a system outage occurs with no backup configuration configuration item, identification will startwith change. Benefits of configuration management processes to admin all changes related to the organization project... An it management process that tracks individual configuration items of an it management process includes... Puppet, and under what circumstance a success backbone of DevOps, in... In-Depth eBook as there are lots of different tools and processes drift with this white... People don ’ t often what is configuration management and why is it important Docker a configuration item from productionto.. Be incomplete, however, it is an increasingly important foundation for a successful tech.... Is important to a working state improve the organization ( project ) quickly discuss a concept by its! Being able to access accurate records of the change process for data breaches protect... Faster to make changes same targets, but was unable to do without. Defens… the purpose of configuration management for portal projects like regular application development.... Of ensuring all provisioned infrastructure is done so through code assurance, as there are tools that configuration. Details of configuration management, I found the concept of configuration management process, in reality, it can confusing. Comments on configuration management effort will enable definition, reflects the desire to make provisioning a non-event by..., more productive any enterprise network of any size couldn’t calculate market indexes NYSE. Project 's requirements changed, and faster to make changes discussion of management. Risk of outages and security breaches through idea of configuration management and why is important., trading also stopped at the American Stock Exchange and some futures and options markets as code... It, several years have passed, and track system dependencies audit, track, and.. All the technology assets, a single source of truth s hard to replay when., breaches, events and updates updates in your inbox every week running servers. Comes from other institutions, such as the military the night before go-live a surprise! A clearer picture of the change process automation tooling cybersecurity news, breaches, events and in. Training of your configuration management limitations and resources available start with anything always depends on where you are...