You are now ready to register for the certification program by using any one of the following options:. Generic filters. Go to Training Calendar. Request In-house Training. Become a Trainer. To be successful with Configuration Manager in a production environment, thoroughly plan and test the management features. Configuration Manager is a powerful management application, with the potential to affect every computer in your organization.
When you deploy and manage Configuration Manager with careful planning and consideration of your business requirements, Configuration Manager can reduce your administrative overhead and total cost of ownership. After you install Configuration Manager, use the Configuration Manager console to configure sites and clients, and to run and monitor management tasks. This console is the main point of administration, and lets you manage multiple sites. You can install the Configuration Manager console on additional computers, and restrict access and limit what administrative users can see in the console by using Configuration Manager role-based administration.
For more information, see Use the Configuration Manager console. Software Center is an application that's installed when you install the Configuration Manager client on a Windows device.
Configuration audit answers Does the system satisfy the requirements? One of the first steps in successfully implementing SCM is to obtain management sponsorship. This means public endorsement for SCM, and making sure the resources needed for success are allocated to the project.
Management also needs to establish SCM as a priority and help facilitate implementation. An organization can maintain management sponsorship by identifying and resolving risks, reporting progress, managing SCM implementation details, and communicating with all members of the organization.
The next step is to assess current SCM processes. Every organization that produces software is practicing some type of SCM. This may not be a formal process or even thought of as SCM. To assess current processes, one might ask the following questions: How are files identified? How are versions of software releases identified?
How are baselines controlled? What files are included in each release? How are changes to the software identified and tracked? After assessing your current processes, the next step is to analyze your requirements. What is it that your organization wants to accomplish? The requirement may be a specific level SW-CMM certification, ISO certification, some other standard or certification, or simply to improve your software process.
Document the requirements for your organization, how you will implement them, and how you will measure success. Depending on the requirements of your organization, the various roles and formality of the SCM team may differ. At a minimum there should be a point-of-contact for SCM. Other recommended roles and functions include:. With each new software project or process, there is some amount of associated risk.
The same is true when implementing SCM. Whether an organization is implementing a whole new system or just updating a few processes, there will be risks that must be addressed.
Note that having risk is not bad on the contrary, risk is a necessary part of SCM and the software development process. Without risk, there is no opportunity for improvement.
Risk-free SCM processes are typically of little use. The very nature of SCM requires risk-taking. Managing and controlling the risks associated with SCM is essential to the success of SCM processes in terms of cost, schedule, and quality.
It is always less expensive to be aware of and deal with risks than to respond to unexpected problems. A risk that has been analyzed and resolved ahead of time is much easier to deal with than one that surfaces unexpectedly [Guidelines ]. The Software Engineering Institute has developed a risk management program comprising six different activities, with communication being central to all of them. This program can be used when implementing SCM to effectively manage the associated risks.
Risk management should be viewed as an important part of the SCM process. A brief summary of each activity follows [Paulk ]:. As part of an organization's risk management program, a plan should be developed that integrates the above outlined activities.
An SCM risk management plan may focus on addressing risks in three areas: business, people, and technology [Burrows ].
The business risks include [Burrows ]:. The secret to SCM risk management is to identify and resolve potential risks before they surface unexpectedly or become serious problems. Develop a program for identifying and managing risks. Incorporate an SCM risk management plan that addresses risks to business, people, and technology.
Central to everything is communication. Communicate as much as possible to as many people and organizations as possible. Configuration management CM is the framework around which software engineering processes exist. It is interesting how there is almost a one-to-one relationship between the life-cycle activities of software engineering and those of configuration management. CM is a carefully orchestrated set of activities that provides the organization and control required to manage an idea from its inception to its deployment.
When undocumented changes are made across many systems and applications, it adds to instability and downtime. Manually identifying systems that require attention, determining remediation steps, prioritizing actions, and validating completion are too complicated to perform in large environments.
Configuration management systems let you consistently define system settings, as well as build and maintain those systems according to those baseline settings. Configuration management helps users and administrators know where certain services exist and what the current state of applications are.
Think of it like this. If you keep up with the small things, you can avoid more complicated, expensive repairs in the future. For example, you can make sure that your test and production environments match. With configuration management, you can accurately replicate an environment with the correct configurations and software because you know what exists in the original environment.
The role of configuration management is to maintain systems in a desired state. Traditionally, this was handled manually or with custom scripting by system administrators. Automation is the use of software to perform tasks, such as configuration management, in order to reduce cost, complexity, and errors.
Through automation, a configuration management tool can provision a new server within minutes with less room for error. You can also use automation to maintain a server in the desired state, such as your standard operating environment SOE , without the provisioning scripts needed previously. Configuration management tools make changes and deployments faster, remove the potential for human error, while making system management predictable and scalable.
They also help you to keep track of the state of your resources, and keep you from repeating tasks, like installing the same package twice.
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