Tracking changes to CIs and relationships by auditing

This use case describes how to keep track of the changes to CIs and relationships in the BMC Helix CMDB using the auditing feature of AR System to track changes to instance data. You enable BMC Helix CMDB auditing on a per-class basis, and you select which attributes trigger an audit and which are written as a result.

Auditing includes the following benefits:

  • Monitor granular changes to the data model at the CIs and attributes level.
  • Make sure their business services are monitored for changes
  • Prepare in advance for most service interruptions.

Related topics

Differences-between-auditing-and-the-compare-dataset-activity

Receiving-CI-change-events-with-Event-Channels

Auditing-changes-to-CIs

Scenario

Calbro Services needs to have a detailed account of the changes that have occurred to CIs and relationships.

Tracking changes using auditing. The Calbro Services administrator knows that changes to the service model can be disruptive to the customers using those services. To help identify all of the changes to business services and the supporting technical services, the administrator decides to audit the BMC_BusinessService class. The Calbro Services administrator configures copy auditing for this class in the Class Manager. Copy auditing creates a copy of each audited instance. When you enable Copy auditing for a class, each form pertaining to that class is duplicated to create audit forms that hold audited instances. This includes forms from superclasses, because they hold data for instances of their subclasses. The audit forms are automatically named with the suffix :AUDIT.

Copy auditing this class does not affect overall system performance because changes to the BMC_BusinessService class are few in number. Copy auditing also enables greater ability to search for changes to the class.

Workflow

Product | Component | Console

User

Action

Reference

Class Manager

Configuration manager

Selecting the instances and attributes to be included in the audit.

Class Manager

Configuration manager

Enable auditing for specific classes to identify changes to CIs and relationships.

BMC Helix ITSM: Asset Management

Asset manager

Run a compare dataset activity between the sandbox and the BMC Asset.


 

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