The necessities of structured, process-orientated IT have greatly increased over the last years. More complex infrastructures, statutory provisions, obligations and economical aspects determine the securing of standard-conform IT-companies. In this process many companies deal with questions about adequate methodical approaches suitable for their own environment. A broad and easy to maintain documentation is an essential requirement. Organisations like OGC have attended to the ITIL-guidelines years ago and offer a compendium in terms of „Best Practices“; we created a freely available platform for that: i-doit stands for „I document IT“.
The english translation of „I do it“ gets willingly taken also. This could lead to the „I did it“ t-shirts, which you get after a bungee jump. But you can be relieved, i-doit is completely harmless regarding that aspect. Although the feeling you get after using i-doit is comparable:
The product's aim is to allow intelligent documentation and to offer employees of an IT-bureau a platform with which a linked documentation of the relevant IT-components becomes possible. An effective inventory prepares the way to a precise overview of the IT-infrastructure. Therewith daily administration and strategical planning is essentially simplified.
The programs modular design allows easy enhancement or connection of further components and data and enables interaction with them. Within i-doit there is a workflow module for example, which administrates work orders or checklists and offers status-based notifications.
Features overview
- comprehensive, with customizable depth of detail solution for documentations inside an IT-Company
- conclusive linking of communication data (electricity-, data-, storage-networks, etc.)
- historical documentation of changes, including and archiving function
- definition of dependences
- documents like maintenance contracts, emergency plans, manuals, drivers of configuration data can be integrated and assigned to objects
- personalised work orders and checklists can be administrated via an expendable workflow-module
- user-dependent visualization of objects and tasks
- integrated user-, contact-, and rights-management
- i-doit is freely available under an open source license
- access is possible with any standard webbrowser
- modular design and defined interfaces (XML) offer easy and individual extensions of the program's functionality as well as integration of additional modules, existing data or applications
- i-doit relies on established, open standards (LAMP: Linux – Apache – MySQL - PHP)
Background
ITIL, ITSM, BS15000, ISO20000 have often been quoted in the past years but were held rather abstract. They all center on the question, how an IT-enviroment should be administrated and run to ensure a standard-conform and economical operating of required applications and services. No need to overstrain this now, but information and communication technology (IuK) evolves towards becoming a central element of a company's ability to work. In many industries and companies it has already reached a huge significance. So it's no wonder, when there is increasing talk about solutions, with which a standard-conform operating can be ensured. The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has established itself as a synonym for a multitude of processes regarding this question.
How a „standard-conform operating“ is defined in an individual case, is the operator's concern. Questions about costs, processes or performances can be a significant part of considerations. The ideal case envisions that through implementation of adequate methods improvements in all three fields can be achieved, but complexity of administration often beats all advantages.
ITIL was born in the eighties, when the British government under the leadership of Maggie Thatcher discovered, IT and its operating devoured a lot of money. At the same time the enormous potential of the relatively young technology was realized. So instead of cutting the money, a government agency (at that time CCTA, Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency, today: OGC, Office Of Government Commerce) was entrusted with the development and definition of measures and processes, with which a economical and secure operating of IT could be ensured.
After some troubles ITIL was born – a collection of guides for improvements of processes regarding IT-operating. In the following years ITIL, which was firstly planned as an internal instrument for the government only, established itself surprisingly good in the private economy. In this connection the ITSMF, a big international forum of operators for exchange about IT Service Management (ITSM), was founded. In the meantime ITIL served as a basis for a British standard (BS15000) of which ISO20000 was derived. Currently the ITIL-guides are available in their 3rd revision (v3).
The needs for a structured, process-orientated operating have heavily risen in the last years. On the one hand due to more complex infrastructures and the requirement to keep those structures available according to service-agreements, on the other hand due to statutory provisions or obligations regrading insurance or finance. Not to mention economical restraints, to provide required services with minimal input.
But what exactly does ITIL describe? ITIL delivers with its guidelines so called disciplines, which need to be met for complex implementation. Basically there is a differentiation between Service support and Service delivery. Service support fields are of rather operative and delivery fields rather strategic nature.
Configuration management takes up an exeptional position inside of service support. In the implementation the configuration management represents the basis of information which nearly all processes can access. An equivalent data base is named CMDB (Configuration Management Data Base) and contains information regarding used hardware, software, documentations, processes and procedures and provides them with logical links. A Form of intelligent documentations of the IT-environment, which exceeds pure inventory or asset solutions.
Functions
And that's exactly what i-doit provides. A mostly customizable data base, connected with a powerful, modular frontend to display and edit documented data. Besides logical links within the application itself (for example: assignment of a maintenance agreement to a system) i-doit offers documentation of various connections. Using this, power, storage and data networks can be pictured as an exact representation.
Furthermore indirect dependencies can be defined. An application may not only be dependent on the server it's running on, but maybe also on a router's availability, because the program is used from applications behind the router. This information is interesting for different purposes. On the one hand simulations, which deal with the question „what happens, if...“, can be developed. On the other hand this data can be used as foundation for monitoring-systems (for example: nagios), which support hierarchical structures.
Actually „playing“ with the data marks the exciting part of working with the software. Gathering of power consumption and thermal load allows you to calculate needed capacities for power and climatisation. Site-related assignment of objects allows – via an addon – a visualised and dynamic view of rooms and data cabinets including their contents and accumulated data regarding required space, power usage and thermal load. Data which is relevant for dates (for example expiry of a maintenance agreement) can be provided with an automatic notification.
While we're at it: Another part of the i-doit environment is the workflow module, which interacts with the CMDB, allows assignments and contains a status-based notification system. With this work orders or routine work (checklists) within IT-operating can be administrated via i-doit. Furthermore the underlying workflow module is extensible and can eventually display any processes.
Perspective
For the time being development of the CMDB's core in i-doit is completed with version 1.0. Remaining work contains adjustments to the new v3 of the ITIL guides and an enhancement of the existing rights management. Presumably an advanced role model will be established, which will affect locations, object types and categories as far as possible. But the final definition will be documented elsewhere (Wiki).
Another focal point will be the increased usage of AJAX-technology during design of interfaces and preparation of functions and easy forms.
At the same time developers of synetics and other people are working on enhancements and extensions for i-doit. For example a report generator is in the works, which enables analysis and consolidated queries of i-doit data.
A nearly finished prototypo of a syslog-module, which receives status messages of a syslog-instance and posts it in the affected object's logfile, is existent. An optional notification function is planned.
Also the module for dynamic visualization of rooms and racks has been finished and can be requested by interested testers.
The definition of the nagios interface has been done. I-doit will export nagios-relevant data according to documented adresses, connections and dependencies in form of usable configuration files. Nagios collects status messages and – similar to the syslog-mechanism – posts them into the logfile of the affected object in the i-doit CMDB. Parallel traffic light symbols near the objects symbolize their current status.
Development of an simulation model is under discussion. Through the documentation of links and thereby definable dependencies consequences and damages can be simulated. This allows development of scenarios, which can be used as basis for an emergency plan. The content can again be administrated within i-doit and provides - with the help of a simulation - the right steps in the right order for repair, in case of a real emergency.
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