How to Manage, pt. 2

On Tuesday, I discussed the need for monitoring your network. I mentioned Spiceworks, which is a slick program but it didn't scale up enough for me (as of version 2.0). I also mentioned Zenoss which is a great open source app that I'm using to consolidate server logs and monitor server performance. Zenoss is also slick, but it didn't completely scratch my itch.

I know I need to get out of firefighting mode, but a two day introductory course into ITIL has motivated me to actually make some progress. ITIL is a collection of guidelines and best-practices to bring IT departments and business leaders closer together. Using ITIL, the tech guys should only be working on projects that have real value for the organization and the rest of the business should do a better job of letting the tech guys know what's needed. It seems that no one implements the entire ITIL approach. Everyone seems to adapt it to their own needs. A single-person technology department definitely has needs, so we ought to be able to find something useful here, right?

I'm spending this summer working on phase one of our ITIL implementation. This is where we document every piece of hardware and software we own. The theory is that you cannot improve the situation until you know exactly what you have. I thought I had a pretty good handle on what we had until we actually started documenting it. There's a lot of stuff out there that I forgot/never knew about.

All of this information goes into a Change Management Database (CMDB). While I love Zenoss for keeping an eye on my servers and Spiceworks is fine for inventorying a couple hundred PCs, I wanted something different. I found it in the open source application known as GLPI. GLPI is an abbreviation for something in French. For all I know, it is some kind of insult.

Whatever the name means, the actual application is far from insulting. GLPI allows you to keep track of every piece of equipment (including every card, stick of RAM, processor, hard drive, etc. in your PC) and software, tie them together (connecting a monitor and/or printer to a PC), assign them to locations, and assign them to people. It also allows you to store all financial information about the item with the actual item (information like: warranty, value, depreciation, support contracts, and more). Another feature I like is the ability to attach files to an item. I'm attaching PDFs of the user manuals to everything!

GLPI includes a help desk. Tickets can be entered from email or a web form. The tickets are associated with a piece of equipment or software. While looking at the ticket, you can easily bring up the item being referenced. All of the history, financial information, warranty information, and configuration specifications are at your fingertips.

The intial payoff comes from having tickets recorded in a database instead of on hastily written notes stuffed in your pockets. It also comes from having all the information about an item easily available before you begin troubleshooting. But I'm really looking forward to the future day when I can pull out reports showing the history of our computers and use them to quantify new purchases.

There are a few issues we're still working through. First, it is time consuming to get everything in the CMDB the first time. Fortunately, GLPI works with OCS NG Inventory. (OCS is also French, I think.) OCS is a small agent that uploads computer information when a user logs in. This is a huge time saver on getting information into the database. The problem comes with sorting it all out, getting the financial information in place, and verifying that everything is where it is supposed to be. Plus, certain tech items like projectors are not going to be discovered by a software agent.

A second issue I am concerned about is making sure everyone enters their requests into the system. I've taken requests as I've walked down the halls for so long, I'm afraid people will not understand why I'm forcing them to use a web form to enter their requests. I'm going to do my best to explain the reasons and hope that they see this as a win-win situation.

My biggest concern is persistence. It will be really easy to not keep up with the database or not force people to enter tickets in the help desk. The only way we will reap any rewards from this is if we keep at it.

There is a lot more to ITIL than I've covered here. I'm planning on at least one more post about it in the near future. There's also more to the implementation than I've discussed so far. Look for a post on that this weekend.