Creating a CI for an existing service model
In BMC Helix CMDB, most configuration items (CIs) are created by discovery applications, such as BMC Discovery.
In addition, you can use CMDB Explorer to create CIs manually. For example, you have installed a new computer system, and you do not want to wait until the next scheduled discovery process to include this computer system CI in CMDB.
You cannot directly create CIs in the production (BMC.Asset dataset), which is reserved for production use. To add new CIs in the BMC.Asset dataset, you must create the CIs in your Sandbox dataset and promote it.
Additionally, you can directly add CIs to non-production datasets. There is no need to create the CI in your Sandbox dataset and promote it to the specified non-production dataset.
BMC Best Practices
If you manually create CIs in the CMDB, you must populate key attributes with appropriate values so that the CI can be identified against discovery data. Define conventions for manually creating CIs, including the classes to populate, the attributes to populate, and the format of attribute values.
For example, Calbro has a policy of manually creating computer system CIs. They do not manually create CIs for components, such as operating systems or diskdrives. Manually created computersystem CIs must populate the HostName and Domain, or they must populate the Serial Number as configured on the computer system.
Before you begin
To create a CI in CMDB Explorer, the assumption is that you already have a service model in place.
Before you create an CI, you must know both the name of the class that you are instantiating and the namespace in which it resides. The classes provided with BMC Helix CMDB in the Common Data Model (such as BMC_ComputerSystem ) reside in the BMC.CORE namespace. Classes provided with other integrating BMC products reside in other namespaces.
If you don't know the namespace for the class that you are instantiating, contact a CMDB administrator.
You must be a member of a group with either the CMDB Data Publisher role or CMDB Configuration Manager role. For more information about roles, see Providing users with permissions to access the CMDB Portal by using groups and roles.
Ensure that you have configured the default web path before you can create a CI. For details, see Configuring the server to allow the editing of a CI.
Creating a CI in your production dataset
You cannot create, edit, or delete CIs directly from the BMC.ASSET (production) dataset. In CMDB Explorer, when you are viewing a CI from the BMC.ASSET dataset and switch to edit mode, any actions that you perform happen in the Sandbox dataset. Even if you are creating a new CI, you might start by searching for an existing CI in BMC.ASSET. Then switch to edit mode, and you can edit the CI or create a new CI. After making final edits to the CI, you then promote it to the BMC.ASSET dataset.
You can create a CI in a non-production dataset and subsequently merge it with the production dataset.
The following video gives you a quick overview on how you can manage CIs in CMDB Explorer.
To create a CI in your production dataset
Perform the following steps to create a CI in your production dataset:
- In the CMDB Portal, search for a CI in the production dataset, which is BMC.Asset in this case.
- On the search results page as shown in the preceding figure, click the CI that you want to view in the CMDB Explorer.
The CI opens in the CMDB Explorer. The default view shown is a view-only mode, in which you can only view the CIs in the CMDB Explorer.
- Switch to edit mode using the Edit Mode toggle switch.
You can create a CI or edit a CI only in the edit mode. - The view that you now see is the Sandbox view. You can edit the CIs in the Sandbox dataset so that the changes you make here do not affect your production data until you promote the CI to the production dataset. The Create CI tab on the left-hand side panel is enabled, as shown in the following figure.
- Click Create CI.
The available classes are shown in the Class Palette.
You can use the Search box to search for the desired class.
- Drag and drop a CI belonging to the selected class into the CMDB Explorer canvas.
The Add details dialog box is displayed in which you can edit the details of the CI.
A new CI of the selected type is created in the CMDB Explorer canvas. Now that the CI is created, you can edit the CI to populate its other attributes, or add a relationship between the CIs, and then promote the CI to the production dataset.
To create a CI in a non production dataset
The procedure to create a CI in a non production dataset is very similiar to the procedure described in the previous section. But instead of the Sandbox dataset, you can create the CI in the dataset that you have selected. There is no need to promote the CI because it is directly created in the same dataset.
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