| **
We just went through this with one
of our clients – tracking VM servers within the Asset Management
strategy. The VM servers are tracked just like any other asset for
several reasons: 1)
The asset needs to be
operationaly tracked like any other asset (i.e., IMAC, Break/Fix, etc…); 2)
The asset needs to have
its contractual obligations tracked and linked to the asset; 3)
The physical location
of the asset needs to be tracked; 4)
The topology of the
asset needs to be tracked (i.e., it RUNS_ON a Linux Host, etc…); 5)
The asset has a
lifecycle like any other asset, therefore, it has financial management
responsbilities; 6)
An Incident, Service
Request, Change, 7)
The asset needs to be
realted to the software that is being allocated for this VM server to track S/W
licenses; …There
are many other reasons that we track it (SOX, compliancy, etc..) that we can go
into, if interested. As far
as uniquely identifying (eg, Serial #) each VM server has its own internal Id
that makes it unique. From our standpoint we went a step further –
even before the server is found on the wire its being tracked. The asset
is “received” in like any other asset and goes into the
inventory process. We have another process for “marrying”
this asset that is in inventory to the live/operational version of it found on
the wire. It’s
a great use-case for the “real-world” that is often looked over as
something trivial. We run into a lot of these that go beyond what the “normal”
use-case. ________________________________________ Business Transparency, Inc. Matthew White President (201) 248-0438 (973) 584-0374 (fax) From: Action Request
System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto: We were also thinking that is the best
short term solution to track them as Assets but what Asset ID do you set for a
VM server? They are not really servers. They
are essentially just files that you setup and can copy and move to one physical
server to another but its not a machine with a Serial or some other
identification tag. Not sure if there is something glaring
with a Virtual server (some number perhaps) that you could use to uniquely
identify it? The only way we reference a VM server is by its name but
that does seem like a good candidate for the Asset ID. Thanks
From: Action
Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto: ** Are you using Topology to track the
relationships? I know it is very lacking in 5.6. We have the
virtual devices in as "Main Assets", since we treat them as
such. They all have the same life cycle that physical assets have.
Also, we can relate our Patrol monitoring to assets, but not Components. Tom Luebbe From: Action
Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto: ** A
Sever support person asked our Remedy team a good question about handling
Virtual servers in regards to Asset Management tracking and Change ticket
relationship. Our
infrastructure teams want to be able to track changes to Virtual servers and
track that they have been moved from one server to another and essentially been
relocated. Virtual
servers are not basically a physical object but merely a file system on a
server so there does not seem to be a way to set a good unique ID for these. The
VMs sound like they would fit as a Asset Component to an Asset but Asset
Components in the world of ITSM 5.6 cannot be related to Change tickets or Help
Desk tickets but can only be related to an Asset record and the Asset record
would be related to a Change. The
problem also seems to be that if you move a Virtual server from one location to
another location to another server, if the Virtual server was tracked as a
component then the component's Main Asset relationship would have to
change. This seems to be somewhat tedious. Have
any others determined the best way to handle this in Asset Management 5.6?
Thanks
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Title: Tracking Vitrual Servers in Remedy AM 5.6
