Configuration management - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Configuration management (CM) is a field of management

Management

Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...

that focuses on establishing and maintaining consistency of a system or product's performance and its functional and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life.

For information assurance

Information Assurance

Information assurance is the practice of managing risks related to the use, processing, storage, and transmission of information or data and the systems and processes used for those purposes...

, CM can be defined as the management of security features and assurances through control of changes made to hardware, software, firmware, documentation, test, test fixtures, and test documentation throughout the life cycle of an information system. CM for information assurance, sometimes referred to as Secure Configuration Management, relies upon performance, functional, and physical attributes of IT platforms and products and their environments to determine the appropriate security features and assurances that are used to measure a system configuration state.

For example, configuration requirements may be different for a network firewall that functions as part of an organization's Internet boundary versus one that functions as an internal local network firewall.

History

Configuration management was first developed by the United States Air Force for the Department of Defense in the 1950s as a technical management discipline of hardware. The concepts of this discipline have been widely adopted by numerous technical management functions, including systems engineering

Systems engineering

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how complex engineering projects should be designed and managed over the life cycle of the project. Issues such as logistics, the coordination of different teams, and automatic control of machinery become more...

(SE), integrated logistics support

Integrated Logistics Support

Integrated logistics support is an integrated approach to the management of logistic disciplines in the military, similar to commercial product support or customer service organisations...

(ILS), Capability Maturity Model Integration

Capability Maturity Model Integration

Capability Maturity Model Integration is a process improvement approach whose goal is to help organizations improve their performance. CMMI can be used to guide process improvement across a project, a division, or an entire organization...

(CMMI), ISO 9000

ISO 9000

The ISO 9000 family of standards relates to quality management systems and is designed to help organizations ensure they meet the needs of customers and other stakeholders . The standards are published by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, and available through National...

, Prince2

PRINCE2

PRojects IN Controlled Environments 2 is a structured project management method endorsed by the UK government as the project management standard for public projects. The methodology encompasses the management, control and organisation of a project...

project management methodology, COBIT

COBIT

COBIT is a framework created by ISACA for information technology management and IT Governance. It is a supporting toolset that allows managers to bridge the gap between control requirements, technical issues and business risks.-Overview:...

, Information Technology Infrastructure Library

Information Technology Infrastructure Library

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library , is a set of good practices for IT service management that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. In its current form , ITIL is published in a series of five core publications, each of which covers an ITSM lifecycle stage...

(ITIL), product lifecycle management

Product lifecycle management

In industry, product lifecycle management is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal...

, and application lifecycle management

Application Lifecycle Management

Application Lifecycle Management is a continuous process of managing the life of an application through governance, development and maintenance...

. Many of these functions and models have redefined configuration management from its traditional holistic approach to technical management. Some treat configuration management as being similar to a librarian activity, and break out change control or change management

Change management

Change management is a structured approach to shifting/transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. It is an organizational process aimed at helping employees to accept and embrace changes in their current business environment....

as a separate or stand alone discipline. However the bottomline is and always shall be Traceability.

Software configuration management

The traditional software configuration management (SCM) process is looked upon by practitioners as the best solution to handling changes in software projects. It identifies the functional and physical attributes of software at various points in time, and performs systematic control of changes to the identified attributes for the purpose of maintaining software integrity and traceability throughout the software development life cycle.

The SCM process further defines the need to trace changes, and the ability to verify that the final delivered software has all of the planned enhancements that are supposed to be included in the release. It identifies four procedures that must be defined for each software project to ensure that a sound SCM process is implemented. They are:

Configuration identification
Configuration control
Configuration status accounting
Configuration audits

These terms and definitions change from standard to standard, but are essentially the same.

Configuration identification is the process of identifying the attributes that define every aspect of a configuration item. A configuration item is a product (hardware and/or software) that has an end-user purpose. These attributes are recorded in configuration documentation and baselined. Baselining
Baseline (configuration management)
Configuration management is the process of managing change in hardware, software, firmware, documentation, measurements, etc. As change requires an initial state and next state, the marking of significant states within a series of several changes becomes important...

an attribute forces formal configuration change control processes to be effected in the event that these attributes are changed.

Configuration change control is a set of processes and approval stages required to change a configuration item's attributes and to re-baseline them.

Configuration status accounting is the ability to record and report on the configuration baselines associated with each configuration item at any moment of time.

Configuration audits are broken into functional and physical configuration audit
Physical Configuration Audit
A Physical Configuration Audit is the formal examination of the "as-built" configuration of aconfiguration item against its technical documentation to establish or verify the configuration item's product baseline....

s. They occur either at delivery or at the moment of effecting the change. A functional configuration audit ensures that functional and performance attributes of a configuration item are achieved, while a physical configuration audit ensures that a configuration item is installed in accordance with the requirements of its detailed design documentation.

Configuration management is widely used by many military organizations to manage the technical aspects of any complex systems, such as weapon systems, vehicles, and information systems. The discipline combines the capability aspects that these systems provide an organization with the issues of management of change to these systems over time.

Outside of the military, CM is appropriate to a wide range of fields and industry and commercial sectors.

Computer hardware configuration management

Computer hardware configuration management is the process of creating and maintaining an up-to-date record of all the components of the infrastructure, including related documentation. Its purpose is to show what makes up the infrastructure and illustrate the physical locations and links between each item, which are known as configuration items.

Computer hardware configuration goes beyond the recording of computer hardware for the purpose of asset management, although it can be used to maintain asset information. The extra value provided is the rich source of support information that it provides to all interested parties. This information is typically stored together in a configuration management database (CMDB

CMDB

A configuration management database is a repository of information related to all the components of an information system. It contains the details of the configuration items in the IT infrastructure. Although repositories similar to CMDBs have been used by IT departments for many years, the term...

). This concept was introduced by ITIL

Itil

Itil may mean:*Atil or Itil, the ancient capital of Khazaria*Itil , also Idel, Atil, Atal, the ancient and modern Turkic name of the river Volga.ITIL can stand for:*Information Technology Infrastructure Library...

.

The scope of configuration management is assumed to include, at a minimum, all configuration items used in the provision of live, operational services.

Computer hardware configuration management provides direct control over information technology

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

(IT) assets and improves the ability of the service provider to deliver quality IT services in an economical and effective manner. Configuration management should work closely with change management.

All components of the IT infrastructure should be registered in the CMDB. The responsibilities of configuration management with regard to the CMDB are:

identification
control
status accounting
verification

The scope of configuration management is assumed to include:

physical client and server hardware products and versions
operating system software products and versions
application development software products and versions
technical architecture product sets and versions as they are defined and introduced
live documentation
networking products and versions
live application products and versions
definitions of packages of software releases
definitions of hardware base configurations
configuration item standards and definitions

The benefits of computer hardware configuration management are:

helps to minimize the impact of changes
provides accurate information on CIs (Configuration Items)
improves security by controlling the versions of CIs (Configuration Items) in use
facilitates adherence to legal obligations
helps in financial and expenditure planning

Maintenance systems

Configuration management is used to maintain an understanding of the status of complex assets with a view to maintaining the highest level of serviceability for the lowest cost. Specifically, it aims to ensure that operations are not disrupted due to the asset (or parts of the asset) overrunning limits of planned lifespan or below quality levels.

In the military, this type of activity is often classed as "mission readiness", and seeks to define which assets are available and for which type of mission; a classic example is whether aircraft on-board an aircraft carrier are equipped with bombs for ground support or missiles for defense.

A theory of configuration maintenance was worked out by Mark Burgess

Mark Burgess (computer scientist)

Mark Burgess is a researcher and writer at Oslo University College in Norway, who is well known for work in computer science in the field of policy-based configuration management....

, with a practical implementation on present day computer systems in the software Cfengine

Cfengine

CFEngine is a popular open source configuration managementsystem, written by Mark Burgess.Its primary function is to provide automated configuration and...

able to perform real time repair as well as preventive maintenance.

Preventive maintenance

Understanding the "as is" state of an asset and its major components is an essential element in preventive maintenance as used in maintenance, repair, and overhaul and enterprise asset management

Enterprise Asset Management

Enterprise asset management means the whole life optimal management of the physical assets of an organization to maximize value. It covers such things as the design, construction, commissioning, operations, maintenance and decommissioning/replacement of plant, equipment and facilities...

systems.

Complex assets such as aircraft, ships, industrial machinery etc. depend on many different components being serviceable. This serviceability is often defined in terms of the amount of usage the component has had since it was new, since fitted, since repaired, the amount of use it has had over its life and several other limiting factors. Understanding how near the end of their life each of these components is has been a major undertaking involving labor intensive record keeping until recent developments in software.

Predictive maintenance

Many types of component use electronic sensors to capture data which provides live condition monitoring

Condition monitoring

Condition monitoring is the process of monitoring a parameter of condition in machinery, such that a significant change is indicative of a developing failure. It is a major component of predictive maintenance. The use of conditional monitoring allows maintenance to be scheduled, or other actions...

. This data is analyzed on board or at a remote location by computer to evaluate its current serviceability and increasingly its likely future state using algorithms which predict potential future failures based on previous examples of failure through field experience and modeling. This is the basis for "predictive maintenance".

Availability of accurate and timely data is essential in order for CM to provide operational value and a lack of this can often be a limiting factor. Capturing and disseminating the operating data to the various support organizations is becoming an industry in itself.

The consumers of this data have grown more numerous and complex with the growth of programs offered by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). These are designed to offer operators guaranteed availability and make the picture more complex with the operator managing the asset but the OEM taking on the liability to ensure its serviceability. In such a situation, individual components within an asset may communicate directly to an analysis center provided by the OEM or an independent analyst.

Standards

ANSI/EIA-649-1998 National Consensus Standard for Configuration Management
EIA-649-A 2004 National Consensus Standard for Configuration Management
ISO 10007:2003 Quality management systems - Guidelines for configuration management
Federal Standard 1037C
Federal Standard 1037C
Federal Standard 1037C, titled Telecommunications: Glossary of Telecommunication Terms is a United States Federal Standard, issued by the General Services Administration pursuant to the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, as amended....
GEIA Standard 836-2002 Configuration Management Data Exchange and Interoperability
IEEE Std. 828-1998 IEEE Standard for Software Configuration Management Plans
MIL-STD-973 Configuration Management (cancelled on September 20, 2000)
STANAG 4159 NATO Materiel Configuration Management Policy and Procedures for Multinational Joint Projects
STANAG 4427 Introduction of Allied Configuration Management Publications (ACMPs)
CMMI CMMI for Development, Version 1.2 CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT
CMII - The Path to Integrated Process Excellence

Guidelines

IEEE Std. 1042-1987 IEEE Guide to Software Configuration Management
MIL-HDBK-61A CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT GUIDANCE 7 February 2001
10007 Quality management - Guidelines for configuration management
GEIA-HB-649 - Implementation Guide for Configuration Management
ANSI/EIA-649-1998 National Consensus Standard for Configuration Management
EIA-836 Consensus Standard for Configuration Management Data Exchange and Interoperability
ANSI/EIA-632-1998 Processes for Engineering a System

Construction Industry

More recently configuration management has been applied to large construction projects which can often be very complex and have a huge amount of details and changes that need to be documented. Construction agencies such as the Federal Highway Administration have used configuration management for their infrastructure projects. There have been several construction based configuration management software developed that aim to document change orders and RFIs in order to ensure a project stays on schedule and on budget. These programs can also store information to aid in the maintenance and modification of the infrastructure when it is completed. One such application, ccsNet, was tested in a case study funded by the Federal Transportation Administration (FTA) in which the efficacy of configuration management was measured through comparing the approximately 80% complete construction of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Agency (LACMTA) 1st and 2nd segments of the Red Line, a $5.3 billion rail construction project. This study yielded results indicating a benefit to using configuration management on projects of this nature.