LANDesk® Configuration Manager
Visual Management for Vital Service Infrastructure
LANDesk® Configuration Manager is a comprehensive, process-driven solution for controlling change in the IT infrastructure that helps you deliver mission critical services and consistently meet the most rigorous service-level agreements. It combines a full-function configuration management system (CMS) that leverages the process engine functionality of LANDesk® Service Desk. It also extends integration with leading systems management solutions from a range of vendors to bring order, efficiency, transparency, and discipline to change control in the IT infrastructure.
LANDesk Configuration Manager is designed for use in a service management context, where a single, ill-considered change to a key asset can negatively impact high-priority services and the business operations that rely on them. Delivered as an integrated solution composed of software, best-practice process design, and professional integration services, LANDesk Configuration Manager supplements and extends the service management platform with additional configuration management capabilities.
Gain a Federated View of Your Critical Infrastructure
With LANDesk Configuration Manager, any service or resource essential to your business can be defined as a configuration item (CI) and brought under change control, e.g., a key business application, website, database, and any hardware, software, or network asset that supports a critical service. Any relevant information can be associated with a CI and made available for decision support, including descriptions, key costs, ownership, accountability, lifecycle status, configuration history, or business priority.
To simplify and accelerate CI definition, the solution provides quick, convenient data federation across a wide range of data sources, including LANDesk® Management Suite and most leading systems management suites, directory services, and business applications. Built-in data reconciliation validates existing CI records against incoming discovery data, revealing unrecorded or unauthorized changes. CI structures can be generated automatically based on business rules and pre-defined relationships in the source systems that provide CI data. The result is a single, consolidated, up-to-date view of the services under management and the infrastructure that delivers them.
In addition, LANDesk Configuration Manager helps you work with LANDesk Service Desk in a manner that is more configuration-item centric. For example, from a CI in either the CI structure, a query based on CI, or configuration management components, you can now:
- Run a query or filter query based on the CI
- Create a report based on the CI
- Raise a new process directly, automatically populating the appropriate CI record on the process
- Open a CI structure view that contains the selected CI
- Pass systems management functions such as reboot, software deployment, and remote control
The actions to raise a new process, or to run queries or reports, are all available from a configurable context menu on the CI. You can start the CI structure component from a query based on CI, from the tree in the Configuration Manager component, or from any window that contains a CI. If the selected CI appears in more than one structure diagram, a sub-menu appears to enable you to select the required structure diagram.
Map and Visualize Essential Services to the Infrastructure
LANDesk Configuration Manager helps you see and understand the connections between services and the underlying IT infrastructure through graphical CI mapping and visualization. CI structure views capture the relationship between a service and the infrastructure components that deliver it, such as between an email service and a specific server cluster and set of load balancing switches. Your analysts and administrators can visually assess the potential impact of proposed changes on the affected services and users, improving their ability to manage service quality and reduce the risk of unscheduled interruption. Moreover, you can model the technical services that support the business services that comprise your service catalogue. LANDesk Configuration Manager generates CI structures automatically from discovery data, based on business rules and pre-defined relationships reflected in structured naming systems and other data attributes.
Synchronization of Change and Configuration for Lifecycle Version Management
The solution’s versatile CMS also lets you track and manage configuration versions throughout the CI lifecycle. Past versions can be maintained for historical trend analysis and rollback, if necessary, and future versions can be created for efficient rollout planning. When a planned CI configuration change is implemented and confirmed, the CMS shifts its current version to history and its future version to current state automatically.
The solution’s unique combination of event- and process-based automation coupled with desktop management integration from LANDesk and many third-party vendors provides closed-loop synchronization between virtual change processes defined in LANDesk Configuration Manager and physical change processes executed by LANDesk or third-party systems management tools keep CMS configuration records up to date. Discovery tools in the systems management solution are used to validate accurate change execution and update the CMS automatically.
Manage Unexpected Changes to Desired State in Your Infrastructure
LANDesk Configuration Manager has an exception management feature available in version 7.4. For the significant properties of the key types of managed infrastructure CIs you wish to monitor, the system watches the equivalent discovered asset data in LANDesk Management Suite, or a discovery tool of your choice. If any variation is discovered between the managed data in the CMS and the discovered data, details of the variation are logged in LANDesk Service Desk. The built-in RSS feed generator can send an alert or a scheduled email when such variation is discovered.
LANDesk Configuration Manager allows you to not only view the differences, but also to take action directly. You can: 1) view planned changes to the CI to see if the variance is a result of a planned change; 2) tell the system to ignore the variation if such a change is already planned; 3) create a retrospective change if the new state is desirable; and 4) create a reversal change if the new state is undesirable and needs investigation. The result is a reduction of undesired infrastructure change incidents..
A Business-oriented Management Solution for IT Services
By consolidating all relevant knowledge about critical services and their relationships to the IT infrastructure and the business, LANDesk Configuration Manager brings order, efficiency, and safety to your change process. Because key relationships are presented graphically for visual analysis, the potential risks and impacts of any proposed change can be identified and mitigated before they affect your business. Management efficiency and productivity are greatly enhanced because all pending changes can be centrally viewed to optimize deployment scheduling and minimize service interruption. And because cost and lifecycle information can be viewed alongside service and update schedules, service management decisions can be optimized for both technical and financial objectives.
Right-click Integration to Systems Management Solution for IT Services
While LANDesk Configuration Manager provides integration with most leading systems management tools, its interoperation with other LANDesk solutions—particularly the systems lifecycle management solution LANDesk Management Suite—is particularly advantageous. From virtually any location in LANDesk Configuration Manager, administrators have right-click access to all the actions, information, and functionality of this industry-leading solution. The result is improved change control efficiency, transparency, and discipline in a single, consolidated, up-to-date view.