System and method for automated configuration control, audit verification and process analytics

A method for auditing and verifying configuration items (CIs) in an information technology (IT) configuration management database (CMDB) comprising the steps of:

• defining an audit template that includes criteria for selecting CIs for an audit, said criteria including CI attributes, relationships between CIs, the direction of any said relationships, and a starting CI in said CMDB from which to begin said audit;
• representing said CMDB as a relationship tree whose nodes are CIs and edges are relationships and is rooted at the starting CI specified in said audit template, wherein all CIs that do not meet the audit template criteria are removed and cycles are removed based on the direction in which said relationships are to be traversed;
• and
• traversing said relationship tree of said specified CI nodes starting at the starting point CI comparing normalized actual CI instances to corresponding authorized CI instances to detect variances between the normalized actual CI instances and the corresponding authorized CI instances, wherein any CI that are related to a specified CI down the relationship tree are iteratively compared until there is no further downward related CIs.

A program storage device readable by a computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executed by the computer to perform the method steps for auditing and verifying configuration items (CIs) in an information technology (IT) configuration management database (CMDB), the method comprising the steps of:

• identifying which configuration item (CI) types should be part of an audit;
• defining link rules to link an authorized CI type stored in a CMDB to an actual CI type that is part of an IT infrastructure;
• retrieving all authorized CI instances of said identified CI types from said CMDB;
• retrieving all actual CI instances of said identified CI types from a discovery upload of a current IT environment;
• normalizing the actual CI instances;
• comparing the normalized actual CI instances to corresponding authorized CI instances to detect variances between the normalized actual CI instances and the corresponding authorized CI instances;
• and
• taking remedial action when variances are discovered.

A program storage device readable by a computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executed by the computer to perform the method steps for auditing and verifying configuration items (CIs) in an information technology (IT) configuration management database (CMDB), the method comprising the steps of:

• defining an audit template that includes criteria for selecting CIs for an audit, said criteria including CI attributes, relationships between CIs, the direction of any said relationships, and a starting CI in said CMDB from which to begin said audit;
• representing said CMDB as a relationship tree whose nodes are CIs and edges are relationships and is rooted at the starting CI specified in said audit template, wherein all CIs that do not meet the audit template criteria are removed and cycles are removed based on the direction in which said relationships are to be traversed;
• and
• traversing said relationship tree of said specified CI nodes starting at the starting point CI comparing normalized actual CI instances to corresponding authorized CI instances to detect variances between the normalized actual CI instances and the corresponding authorized CI instances, wherein any CI that are related to a specified CI down the relationship tree are iteratively compared until there is no further downward related CIs.