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How to Improve Your APM Deployment with CMDB

Ramy Hassanein

In a perfect world, deployments would always go as planned – however in the world of IT we all know that is not the case. There's a long list of reasons why Application Performance Management (APM) deployments might fail. Some reasons can be aligned to people, others to process and finally some to product.

Today's applications are no longer simple or static in nature. Applications now cover everything from mobile to mainframe and can reside within your datacenter to the cloud as well as everything in between. With that, many questions start to arise:

How do we know what to manage?

How do we determine what the application is made of?

Do we need to deploy an agent?

If so, what kind of agent is needed?

These are all great questions and probably only a handful of examples, but the first task that needs to be addressed is prioritizing applications along with their impact on the business. Higher priority applications are the ones you need to invoke management on first and where detailed transactions coupled with customer experience matter the most. Once you have your "Hit List" the next step is to look under the hood and determine what makes up these applications.

Enter the Configuration Management Database

That is where the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) comes into play. Organizations have spent a tremendous amount of time and resources properly building out and furthermore keeping their CMDB, CIs & relationships accurate. Multiple sources that are designated as Metadata Repositories (MDRs) provide a lot of information to the CMDB so that it becomes the single source of truth within an organizations. So why not leverage all that hard work and precise data?

Within the CMDB and simply by taking a look at the visualizer service map of a particular service you can determine:

1. Who consumes the service>

2. What OS & Servers host the service?

3. What platform is used (eg. Java, .NET…)?

4. What datacenter?

5. Does Production deployment of this app looks like UAT or Test or QA?

And the list goes on.

Leveraging CMDB Can Help You Get Out of Reactive Mode

Historically APM and ITIL have always been a perfect match. It's not just about getting out of reactive mode anymore, but the union is so much more than just password resets or outages and application support. With the focus on continual process improvement, APM can leverage ITIL to help monitor Service Level Agreements (SLAs) metrics which works hand in hand with Service Support and Service Lifecycle. Typically, when we think of this harmonious integration we forget to include the CMDB, and just think about traditional ticket life cycles and MTTR.

When new changes happen in an organization, the first place that should know about it is the Service Desk and the CMDB updated accordingly.

Therefore, a great tool to leverage during any phase of an APM deployment would be your CMBD and its service maps. It can help determine where and what is needed to make sure you are managing your applications correctly with all its components. Whether in the beginning phases of an initial deployment of APM or expanding deployments of agents within an organization, you can use the CMDB's service views to assist. This can even help break down silos that might exist in larger organizations and get APM out of isolation.

Ramy Hassanein is Sr. Principal Consultant at CA Technologies.

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How to Improve Your APM Deployment with CMDB

Ramy Hassanein

In a perfect world, deployments would always go as planned – however in the world of IT we all know that is not the case. There's a long list of reasons why Application Performance Management (APM) deployments might fail. Some reasons can be aligned to people, others to process and finally some to product.

Today's applications are no longer simple or static in nature. Applications now cover everything from mobile to mainframe and can reside within your datacenter to the cloud as well as everything in between. With that, many questions start to arise:

How do we know what to manage?

How do we determine what the application is made of?

Do we need to deploy an agent?

If so, what kind of agent is needed?

These are all great questions and probably only a handful of examples, but the first task that needs to be addressed is prioritizing applications along with their impact on the business. Higher priority applications are the ones you need to invoke management on first and where detailed transactions coupled with customer experience matter the most. Once you have your "Hit List" the next step is to look under the hood and determine what makes up these applications.

Enter the Configuration Management Database

That is where the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) comes into play. Organizations have spent a tremendous amount of time and resources properly building out and furthermore keeping their CMDB, CIs & relationships accurate. Multiple sources that are designated as Metadata Repositories (MDRs) provide a lot of information to the CMDB so that it becomes the single source of truth within an organizations. So why not leverage all that hard work and precise data?

Within the CMDB and simply by taking a look at the visualizer service map of a particular service you can determine:

1. Who consumes the service>

2. What OS & Servers host the service?

3. What platform is used (eg. Java, .NET…)?

4. What datacenter?

5. Does Production deployment of this app looks like UAT or Test or QA?

And the list goes on.

Leveraging CMDB Can Help You Get Out of Reactive Mode

Historically APM and ITIL have always been a perfect match. It's not just about getting out of reactive mode anymore, but the union is so much more than just password resets or outages and application support. With the focus on continual process improvement, APM can leverage ITIL to help monitor Service Level Agreements (SLAs) metrics which works hand in hand with Service Support and Service Lifecycle. Typically, when we think of this harmonious integration we forget to include the CMDB, and just think about traditional ticket life cycles and MTTR.

When new changes happen in an organization, the first place that should know about it is the Service Desk and the CMDB updated accordingly.

Therefore, a great tool to leverage during any phase of an APM deployment would be your CMBD and its service maps. It can help determine where and what is needed to make sure you are managing your applications correctly with all its components. Whether in the beginning phases of an initial deployment of APM or expanding deployments of agents within an organization, you can use the CMDB's service views to assist. This can even help break down silos that might exist in larger organizations and get APM out of isolation.

Ramy Hassanein is Sr. Principal Consultant at CA Technologies.

Hot Topics

The Latest

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 5 covers the infrastructure and hardware supporting AI ...

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 4 covers advancements in AI technology ...

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 3 covers AI's impact on employees and their roles ...

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 2 covers the challenges presented by AI, as well as solutions to those problems ...

In the final part of APMdigest's 2025 Predictions Series, industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025 ...

E-commerce is set to skyrocket with a 9% rise over the next few years ... To thrive in this competitive environment, retailers must identify digital resilience as their top priority. In a world where savvy shoppers expect 24/7 access to online deals and experiences, any unexpected downtime to digital services can lead to significant financial losses, damage to brand reputation, abandoned carts with designer shoes, and additional issues ...

Efficiency is a highly-desirable objective in business ... We're seeing this scenario play out in enterprises around the world as they continue to struggle with infrastructures and remote work models with an eye toward operational efficiencies. In contrast to that goal, a recent Broadcom survey of global IT and network professionals found widespread adoption of these strategies is making the network more complex and hampering observability, leading to uptime, performance and security issues. Let's look more closely at these challenges ...

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The 2025 Catchpoint SRE Report dives into the forces transforming the SRE landscape, exploring both the challenges and opportunities ahead. Let's break down the key findings and what they mean for SRE professionals and the businesses relying on them ...

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The pressure on IT teams has never been greater. As data environments grow increasingly complex, resource shortages are emerging as a major obstacle for IT leaders striving to meet the demands of modern infrastructure management ... According to DataStrike's newly released 2025 Data Infrastructure Survey Report, more than half (54%) of IT leaders cite resource limitations as a top challenge, highlighting a growing trend toward outsourcing as a solution ...

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