Some Cfengine Users
The IT Infrastructure Library of 'best practices' is rapidly becoming
a
core standard for industries around the world.
The Build-Deploy-Manage-Audit model, neatly captures the system life-cycle,
and Cfengine simplifies this model by taking humans out of the implementation phase.
'Build' simply means
accumulating the basic resources and writing system policy based on
enterprise
knowlegde. 'Deploy' means nothing more than publishing policy.
Cfengine then 'manages' the system, both implementing and maintaining.
Finally auditing is performed continually by Cfengine by sampling and
reporting on the compliance with desired state.
Cfengine's desired state automation makes best practice a simple choice.
ITIL recommends Knowledge Management - a key focus in the Cfengine 3 technology. Knowledge management is integrated into every phase of the Cfengine life-cycle, making it easy for technicians to documents policy's intentions for preservation of institutional know-how.
Cfengine and ITIL
The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of human management practices surrounding IT infrastructure
that are designed to bring quality assurance and continuous improvement to organizations. ITIL has emerged
as a de-facto set of ideas about service management. More concretely, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a
collection of books, in which "best practices" for IT Service Management (ITSM) are described.
Different ITIL processes can apply to Cfengine. Below is a table showing an overview of these.
| ISO/IEC 20K processes | Fault | Config./Change | Accounting | Performance | Security |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Incident Management | X | ||||
| Problem Management | X | ||||
| Configuration Management | (X) | ||||
| Change Management | X | ||||
| Release Management | X | ||||
| Budgeting & Accounting for IT services | X | ||||
| Capacity Management | X | ||||
| Continuity & Availibility Management | X | ||||
| Service Reporting | X | ||||
| Information Security Management | X |
ITIL is about processes designed mainly for humans in a workplace. It represents a service oriented view of an organization, and as
such is more scalable than hierarchical views of management. Cfengine is also a service oriented technology, thus there is some overlap
of concepts. Indeed Cfengine is a good tool for implementing and assisting in certain ITIL processes, but we believe that no automation
system can really support what ITIL is about. To get a better understanding on how benefit from Cfengine in your ITIL-way of working,
please download our Special Topic Handbook "Cfengine and ITIL" (24 pages, requires login).
If you want to learn more about Cfengine and ITIL, please click here.
