[colug-432] CMDB, was Re: virtualization, clouds, and infrastructure

[Jonathan Hogue]

> On the devops toolchain mailing list CMDBs came up a while back and if I
> remember right, it is pretty hard to find a good standalone solution that
> has an API and is open source. What are you using?

I was on a project team at Nationwide that tried to implement 2
different enterprise CMDBs. Neither one really worked. Also, I worked
with configuration management on amazon's ordering software.

The only successful CMDB's I've seen had these qualities:
1) home grown
2) built on traditional DBs (mostly relational)
3) tightly integrated to the mechanism that actually makes the change
4) weren't called a CMDB

The most successful one I've seen required all changes (server,
network, code build, deployment) to be specifically requested through
a home grown web tool, and the completion of the request updated the
configuration. (Often, the changes were implemented automatically,
once approved).

I know... Holy Grail, but completely obtainable (but it can't be
purchased off the shelf.)