Definitive Hardware Store
Today, I was corrected by one of my new coworker because I had the impression that all hardware within a given environment would be in the Definitive Hardware Store (DHS), while in fact ITIL defines it as :
An area should be set aside for the secure storage of definitive hardware spares. These are spare components and assemblies that are maintained at the same level as the comparative systems within the live environment. Details of these components and their respective builds and contents should be comprehensively recorded in the CMDB. These can then be used in a controlled manner when needed for additional systems or in the recovery from major Incidents. Once their (temporary) use has ended, they should be returned to the DHS or replacements obtained.
This basically means that it's a set of standby systems used for failing over services in case of incidents. It seems that more practically, the systems in the DHS should be ready to be re-purposed on demand to solve any upcoming capacity or availability issue (instead of being pre-configured to match all possible systems in the environment).
Also, with new technologies like virtualization would this mean that virtual server images in standby could be stored in the DHS ? Is a virtual machine image closer to an hardware component or to a software package ? Any comment ?
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