Importing data into BMC CMDB using discovery tools and Atrium Integrator

This use case describes how to integrate BMC CMDB with BMC Discovery and to import data using Atrium Integrator.BMC Discovery performs discovery of the IT environment provides data that can be used to build the CMDB. Atrium Integrator is used to Populating the CMDB includes activities such as importing and filtering data and verifying that each data import is successful.

Importing data into the BMC CMDB scenario

Scenario

Calbro Services needs to consolidate their IT departments by populating BMC CMDB with the data from the various IT departments. Some IT data resides in spreadsheets or in databases. In some cases, data must be discovered. This disparate data from various IT departments must be moved to BMC CMDB so that Calbro Services has a complete picture of the components in its IT department. While discovery tools bring in data of the IT environment, some existing data in flat files in CSV format is transferred to BMC CMDB with Atrium Integrator.

Discovery of the IT environment

CIs in the IT environment are discovered with BMC Discovery tools.

Calbro Services uses BMC BladeLogic Client Automation to discover hardware and software inventory information about servers, desktops, laptops, and handheld devices. Calbro Services uses BMC BladeLogic Client Automation Configuration Discovery Integration for CMDB to map the collected information and transfer the configuration items (CIs) and their relationships to BMC CMDB.
Calbro Services uses BMC Discovery to build a topology of applications and infrastructure including switches, servers, operating systems, software, configuration files and logs, business applications and dependencies. Calbro Services then uses the CMDB Sync function of BMC Discovery to map the collected information and transfer the CIs and their relationships to BMC CMDB.

Data import into BMC CMDB from sources such as databases, flat files, and XML

Calbro Services needs to transfer its existing data about processors, disk drives, printers, and so on to their centralized database in New York. This data resides in multiple databases, flat files, and XML files in various locations across the globe. Calbro Services wants to transfer information from its Chicago, London, Dublin, and Adelaide sites to their New York centralized database. Calbro Services also wants to transfer the personnel records of employees from the Dublin site to the New York site.

Calbro Services administrator, Allen Allbrook, prepares his CMDB for Atrium Integrator, creates and runs an Atrium Integrator job, verifies its success, and schedules it to run repeatedly.

You can use Atrium Integrator to load data from multiple external data stores into BMC CMDB. You can define how external data maps to BMC CMDB and transform external data using various rules.

With Atrium Integrator, you can schedule and perform bulk data transfers. You can also use Atrium Integrator for initial data loading, incremental data transfers, and data synchronization. For example, you can use Atrium Integrator to synchronize IT data from a discovery application with BMC CMDB, where it can be reconciled with data from other sources to your production dataset.

During data transfers, Atrium Integrator identifies the records to be transferred and performs some or all of the following tasks, depending on how you have configured your integration:

Extract records
Creates new records
Updates records
Deletes records
Transforms data (such as concatenating fields)

Importing data into BMC CMDB workflow

Product \| Component \| Console	User	Action	Reference
BMC Discovery	CMDB Administrator	Integrate BMC CMDB with discovery tools such as BMC Discovery to import discovered data into the CMDB.	Integrating BMC CMDB with BMC Discovery
Atrium Integrator	Configuration Manager	Import data from database tables of a discovery source and transform it by creating jobs in Atrium Integrator or Atrium Integrator Spoon.	Transferring data from external datastores to BMC CMDB

Importing data into BMC CMDB results

Data from inputs, such as LDAP, Remedy AR System forms, BMC Remedy ITSM forms, and those requiring complex staging tasks or complex data manipulations is imported and transformed using the Atrium Integrator and is added to the CMDB.

Importing data into BMC CMDB benefits

You can automate most of the work that goes into populating your CMDB using discovery tools such as BMC Discovery. You can use Atrium Integrator to transform data from various database tables and discovery sources and import it into the CMDB.