Change tracking

Snapshots are particularly useful for capturing standard configurations that can be used when performing audits. To take a snapshot, you must run a Snapshot Job. When you define a Snapshot Job, you can configure the job to take a snapshot of components or live server objects.

Snapshot Jobs include a feature called change tracking that lets you view the changes that occur between the first time you take the snapshot, which functions as the baseline, and the next snapshot at the current moment in time. For every subsequent run, the change tracking lets you view changes that occur between the previous run and the current run. Also, every time you change the definition of the snapshot job and save this change, the next run is used to create a new baseline for change tracking. Change tracking lets you view the changes in an easy to interpret table and, at the part level, in side-by-side comparisons.

Using snapshot and change tracking results, you can:

• Base an audit on a snapshot.
• View changes that occur from one snapshot to another.
• Differentiate between BMC Server Automation and external changes and back out the changes. When performing this differentiation, you can display the Deploy Jobs that may have produced the BMC Server Automation changes.
• Bundle snapshot results into a BLPackage or software package.
• Export the snapshot and change tracking results.

The following figure shows a new baseline is created.

The following figure shows the change tracking results.

Snapshot Jobs are stored in the Jobs folder. Snapshot Jobs that have run at least once are also accessible from the Snapshot Results tab of the associated server, by right-clicking the server in the Servers folder and selecting Browse.

The following topics describe working with Snapshot Jobs:

• Snapshot and audit basics
• Creating Snapshot Jobs
• Modifying Snapshot Jobs
• Snapshot and change tracking results