Introduction to NonStop Operations Management

Change and Configuration Management
Introduction to NonStop Operations Management–125507
7-8
Controlling the Introduction of Change
Controlling the Introduction of Change
Change occurs all the time. If you do not control who makes the changes and when, you
might put your system at risk. If there are no controls, frequent changes and changes by
unauthorized personnel might threaten the stability of the system. For example,
unauthorized personnel might damage the system by loading programs that don’t
conform to your security policies, by removing programs without permission, or by
changing existing programs without informing others.
Methods of preventing these problems include limiting the frequency of changes and
making a person or a group responsible for change control. Limiting the frequency of
changes stabilizes the system. For example, by grouping noncritical changes into
scheduled releases, you can minimize down time.
What Is Change Control?
Change control is the process for proposing, planning, implementing, and testing change
and should be required for all changes. Using a change control process helps minimize
the duration of planned outages (system or application down time that is planned or
scheduled). Change control also ensures the successful migration of a system or
application environment from one stable configuration to another by:
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Ensuring that the scope and ramifications of the change are fully understood
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Providing plans for restoring the original environment so that system operation can
be resumed if the change doesn’t work
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Ensuring that problems and errors are anticipated and reacted to appropriately
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Maintaining the security of your system and applications
Implementing Change Control Successfully
The prerequisites for implementing successful change control include:
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Establishing a single point of control. Making a person or a group responsible for
change control prevents unauthorized personnel from accessing and changing the
system. The change control staff is usually responsible for controlling changes to:
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Hardware
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Operating system software
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Applications
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Procedures
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Macros, command files, and routines used to perform system operations tasks
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Tandem products
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Configuration files
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Databases
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Obtaining company commitment. All organizations necessary to support the change
must be committed to the plan and must clearly understand the change process.