Getting a grip on: configuration management

NEIL LIMBRICK, partner and IT consultant, Limbrick Consultancy LLP, ANME ambassador and founder of theEducationCollective, discusses how to get a handle on configuration management

In previous articles, I have talked about the ten areas that make up the IT operation in your setting.

Last time I wrote about change management and how it is probably least well-established in schools and, potentially, the IT aspect that impacts users the most significantly.

This time we are looking at configuration management, which probably happens really well in most schools, and usually improves user’s lives without them ever really noticing - that’s because configuration management is predominantly used by those responsible for ICT and ICT technical support as it focuses on providing information to help resolve incidents and problems.

Configuration management is far less tangible for the senior leadership of schools - which makes it difficult for them to understand and assess how wellestablished it is within their settings because it looks purely at the way items are configured. In extreme cases you can imagine two desktop computers, identical except for the fact that one works seamlessly and the other does not allow anyone to log in or access the internet. The difference is almost certainly down to the configuration – one may not have the correct settings for connecting to the local area network, for example.

Once equipment has been purchased and set up in a classroom environment, from that point onwards, the ability for trained staff to use it with pupils will largely be down to whether the configuration is correct.

THE 10 AREAS OF IT OPS

● Service desk

● Incident management

● Problem management

● Change management

● Configuration management

● Release management

● Availability and capacity management

● Service level management

● Service continuity management

● Financial management

The role of IT support in schools is varied and the focus moves on quickly from project-to-project, or problem-to-problem. When you are setting up a large number of computers, you get into a rhythm of unboxing, connecting wires, disposing of the packaging, installing the necessary software and configuring all the necessary elements to get each one working well.

It may well be that the configuration of this particular model of computer is subtly different from the others in the school, and so you tweak your process accordingly. Much of this process can also be automated so that simply connecting the PC to the network means the configuration just happens.

The danger comes when, six months down the line, you forget those individual tweaks, or maybe something needs to change in the automated configuration, or something happens to stop it working. If you do not have the necessary information written down, you have to start all over again, working out what is needed should one of those PCs need reinstalling.

In this scenario, one PC might be out of action for a few days but if, instead, the device in question was a network switch, there could be bigger problems. There are far fewer of these in schools than end-user devices and they are installed far less frequently, so there are fewer opportunities to ‘learn’ the configuration. This could result in a much wider impact and for a longer time period.

Effective configuration management is about documenting all the necessary steps and tweaks required to get any type of device, or software application, working well.

Somewhere within your organisation there should be a change management database that holds all this information. It will most likely be administered by your IT support team – whether that is in-house or an external provider. It is one of your most valuable assets and vital for your business resilience, so it should be mentioned in your continuity plans and be in a format (or several formats) that can be accessed in the event of any kind of disaster.

For a lot more information about implementing configuration management take a look at the EdFITS framework on EdTech Centralhttps://edtechcentral.uk/framework/