CA Client Automation and CA SDM (CDMB) integration

[Jakub Kolacny]

Hi team,

we've just implemented CA Client Automation (the CA IT Inventory Management part r14.1) and we would like to integrate it with the CA SDM CMDB (r17). The goal is to populate the assets discovered by ITIM agents to the CA CDMB.

 

Both CA SDM and CA ITIM share the same mdb.

 

Can anyone suggest some DOC? I've found some green books, but it covers only the ticket creation part and not the CDMB.

 

Thanks a lot,

Jakub

[Jon_Israel]

Hi Jakub,

If you have SDM R17 installed and using the same MDB as ITCM, then the assets from ITCM should show up in CMDB automatically.   If they are "discovered" assets, there is a command for SDM that can be run, its called "pdm_disc_imp" which will import discovered assets into CMDB.   However, I would recommend doing that on a test system first before running it in a production environment.   Just to confirm, are you not seeing anything at all in the CMDB CI list?

Let us know,

Jon I.

[Jakub Kolacny]

Hi John,

thanks a lot - I've found the mighty Discovered Assets button and I'm able to manually add the assets to the CMDB which is exactly what I need right now.

 

We definitely don't want to add all discovered assets to the CDMB automatically. The goal is to update specific attributes (like RAM, CPU, HDD, OS, ...). Right now we have the CI's, but only with some basic information like host name or MAC address. Could you please send me some DOC or KNB articles how to handle additional attributes like OS or RAM?

 

I've tried to find the command you mentioned (hoping that there is something for updating CI's), but the was nothing on SDM wiki.

 

Thanks again,

Jakub

[Paulo Alexandre Pedrosa]

Seems that you don't need versioning.
I think pdm_syncimp doesn't give you that if you run it in a regular basis.
If you want it, you should use grloader against the discover data instead.

[Jon_Israel]

Hi Jakub,

I dont think you can pick specific attributes to sync - I think its an all-or-none type of thing.  THere is not much documentation on this because we typically dont see ITCM being used to load into CMDB.  Most folks are using IT Asset Manager or other discovery applications which automatically populate the CMDB CI attribute fields.  GRLoader is a mechanism of loading CIs into CMDB from a spreadsheet or XML output.    THe command that I mentioned will pull in all available attributes that exist in CMDB.  I dont think the command is very well documented unfortunately but I will continue to look and see what I can find.

Thanks,

Jon I.

[Paulo Alexandre Pedrosa]

You can use grloader with jdbc option that allow you to go directly against a database like the mdb itself.
Also a solution is to report against itcm using itcm reporting and then auto export to a csv file and also use grloader to  read that info.

[Jakub Kolacny]

John, Paulo,

thank you - I'll definitely try the GRL option agains mdb. John please let me know if you find more about the commands.

 

Have a great day,

Jakub

[TMACUL]

I belive the best practices to use CMDB it's using all solution including CA ITAM,

 

The Hardware Reconciliation processs will be usefull and powerfull tool to give a big maturity in your process:

Hardware Reconciliation - CA Service Management - 14.1 - CA Technologies Documentation 

 

but however, it's possible to do the integration using GR Loader.

 

The best pratices to use CA CMDB it's using SQL Bridge using split MDB's (SDM x ITIM)

 

 

Using GrLoader you can follow these documents extracting ca_discovered_hardware table.

CA SDM: GRLoader - Everthing you need to know - Loading Configuration Item 

grloader.zip - Everthing you need to load Configuration Itens 

 

 

 

Using the CORA Cleanup Utility - CA Service Management - 17.0 - CA Technologies Documentation 

 

https://docops.ca.com/ca-client-automation/12-9/en/implementing/integrating-with-ca-sdm