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Tech & ITCMDB (Configuration Management Database)
By Sitraka Forler · Lecturer, Durham Business SchoolUpdated 13 September 2026 About this site
An inventory of every IT component and of what depends on what.
Each server, database, application or service is a configuration item, and the CMDB also stores the relationships between them, so it answers "if this fails, what breaks?" during an incident or before a change is approved. ServiceNow and BMC Helix CMDB are common tools, usually fed by automated discovery. It is more than an asset list, and a stale CMDB is worse than none because people trust it.
Example
# What each configuration item runs on, as a CMDB records it
runs_on = {"Trading App": "App Server 1", "App Server 1": "VM Host HV-01"}
item = "Trading App"
while item in runs_on: # follow the chain down to the bottom layer
print(f"{item} runs on {runs_on[item]}")
item = runs_on[item]
# Trading App runs on App Server 1
# App Server 1 runs on VM Host HV-01