Content Management Overview

To work with managed views in Configuration Manager, you first need to prepare the content coming from UCMDB. The managed views contain IT elements organized such that you can analyze and control the CMS data using Configuration Manager.

One of the methods of restructuring the content in preparation for Configuration Manager is CI composition. CI composition is a process whereby a specific CI type is selected as the leading CI, and all the CIs which are part of that CI are grouped under it as component CIs. For example, CPUs are part of a host, so the composite CI of a host encompasses the CPUs as well.

Using composite CIs to display the content:

• is a more intuitive way of presenting the data. You would usually refer to a CPU only in the context of its host.

• helps to simplify the topology, since the topology is only mapped on the level of the composite CIs. Because composite CIs can be composed of many component CIs, the topology map is much simpler.

• enables you to manage a group of related CIs from the leading CI. All changes in the component CIs are captured as a change to the leading CI. You can drill down from there to see details of the component CIs.

The composite CIs that form the content of the managed views are defined by folding rules that detail which CI types are treated as components of composite CIs. You set the folding rules for your composite CIs in the CI Type Manager in Universal CMDB. For details, see How to Set Folding Rules for Composite CIs.

Another method of organizing the data is by setting the layer and classification definitions for the composite CITs. Layers are categories used for grouping composite CITs functionally. Examples of layers include Business, Software, and Infrastructure. Classifications are categories for grouping the composite CITs into finer divisions.

A further step in preparing the UCMDB content for Configuration Manager involves defining managed and comparable attributes for the CITs. Managed attributes are the CIT attributes which you want to manage in Configuration Manager. They are the attributes that are copied to the authorized state when a change is authorized as well as tracked for their history. You can use them in defining policies. Comparable attributes are those managed attributes which are used for CI Baseline comparisons in Configuration Manager.

The values for layers and classifications, as well as the managed attributes and comparable attributes, are defined in the CI type definition in UCMDB.