-by Van Wiles, Lead Integration Engineer
ITIL version 3 introduced the term Configuration Record to describe "A record containing the details of a Configuration Item...Configuration Records are stored in a Configuration Management Database." A Configuration Item (CI) is defined as "Any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT Service. Information about each CI is recorded in a Configuration Record..."
So, most of the time (both in documentation and in communications) when we are talking about CIs in the CMDB, we are really talking about configuration records. The CI is the actual thing that is managed, not the record in CMDB. Other valid terms for configuration records include "CI records" and "instances (of a CMDB class)".
If you are writing about Configuration Items or Configuration Records, it is important to make this distinction. Unfortunately Configuration Record has no abbreviation (CR is an overloaded term already), so I usually just add "record" after "CI" to indicate I am talking about a record in CMDB, not the actual CI. For example, if I say "delete a computer system CI", technically I'm talking about picking up the box and physically removing it. To describe deleting the record in CMDB, I should say "delete the computer system CI record" instead, or "delete the instance of the ComputerSystem class."
This is my first post on the new BMC Developer Network blog so I hope you see it. The UI is sure easier to use, so maybe I'll post more often!
The postings in this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent BMC's opinion or position.