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15 Deployment and Managing Configurations with Dell OpenManage Essentials | Revision A00
5 How to detect and manage configuration drift of a device
in a production environment
Example use case - You have deployed templates to several servers and chassis and want to verify that the
attribute values of the template match the attribute values of the devices. If a device does drift from the
template, you want to know which attributes are different.
To accomplish this use case you must perform the following steps.
1. Get the configuration data from a device, import a template, or use an existing template for
compliance. This template will be used to check configuration drift of target devices and will be
referred to as a ‘compliance template’. (See the How to create a template from a reference device
section).
2. Set a schedule and credentials for getting the current configuration inventory from target devices.
The process is called ‘Configuration Inventory Schedule’. (See the
How to setup and run the
configuration inventory section).
3. Select a compliance template for the devices by associating the devices to a template. (See the
How to associate devices to a template
section).
4. Use the ‘Configuration’ portal to determine compliance and drift. (See the How to view and
leverage the compliance report section).
Note: Device specific attributes are not used for compliance (see the How to edit the device specific
attributes of a deploy template task section for more information on device specific attributes). Creating
a template and configuration compliance has requirements for the OME system and for the target
devices.
To review the requirements for creating a template, see the Template definition
A template is a collection of attributes that describe the settings of a device. The settings describe the
behavior of a device’s hardware. A device may have several hundred attributes depending on the device’s
hardware. An attribute is a name value pair that describes a particular setting of a device. OME installs
with sample server and chassis templates for specific use cases. A user can deploy, edit, clone, delete, or
rename a template. Sample templates must be cloned to deploy or use for compliance.
Requirements for creating a template section.
To review the requirements for the configuration compliance, see the Configuration compliance
requirements section.