The CMDB
The CMDB is the list of things you look after — a config item is one server, one circuit, one licence, one laptop. Link them to tickets and you can answer “what else has gone wrong with this box?” without going through anyone’s memory.
Types define the fields
Section titled “Types define the fields”Settings → CMDB Types is where the shape lives. A type carries its own set of attributes, so a Server asks for a hostname and an IP address and a Circuit asks for a carrier and a bandwidth, rather than every item sharing one lowest-common-denominator form.
The seeded types are Server, License, Circuit, Workstation and Subscription. Each attribute has a key, a label, and a field type — text, number, date, select, checkbox or textarea — and can be marked required.
Date fields can be marked for expiry alerts, which is what turns a licence expiry or a subscription renewal date into something that warns you before it lapses rather than after.
The list
Section titled “The list”CMDB in the rail shows every item with its type, its deployment state, its health, the company it belongs to and when it last changed.
- Deployment is where it is in its life: planned, active, retired.
- Health is how it’s doing right now: operational, warning, incident.
Those are two different questions on purpose. A retired server isn’t unhealthy, and a live one in incident isn’t retired.
Changes are versioned
Section titled “Changes are versioned”Editing a config item’s name, states or attributes writes a new version rather than overwriting the old one. The item’s history is therefore a real record of what it looked like and when — which is the thing you actually want when a ticket from three months ago says the firmware was fine.
Relationships
Section titled “Relationships”Items link to each other — this SBC depends on that circuit — and the item page draws the graph. When a circuit goes into incident, the panel is how you see what else is downstream of it.
On a ticket
Section titled “On a ticket”The Config items panel on a ticket links the kit involved. Once linked, the ticket shows up in that item’s history, which is how the CMDB becomes worth maintaining: every ticket you link makes the next diagnosis faster.