Tracking configuration changes proactively in large IT environments

Abstract

Maintaining consistent views of components in complex IT environments is challenging due to frequent changes applied to the systems. Discovery tools, typically used for scanning the environment, can fail to gather up-to-date information. We present a technique to track changes by monitoring system events induced by a change. The system events are associated to entities in a configuration model. A change in a software component may also necessitate change to a dependent application. We track cross-product dependency by enhancing the configuration model of the service. We show the efficacy of our techniques by extending the configuration model of a complex IT environment. © 2012 IEEE.