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.

The following image provides a representation of how auditing can help you track the CI changes:

Related topics

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

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

Auditing-changes-to-CIs

Track_audit.png

Auditing provides 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.

Scenario

Apex Global wants to have a detailed account of the changes that have occurred to CIs and relationships in their IT environment.

Chris, a configuration manager at Apex Global, 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, Chris decides to audit the BMC_BusinessService class. He opens the Class Manager in CMDB Portal and opens the BMC_BusinessService class. In the Audit field, he selects Copy, to enable 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 for tracking the changes by auditing

Track_audit_workflow.png

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.

Class Manager

Configuration manager

View the audit report with the list of CIs that were changed and the type of change made.

 

 

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