Patent ID: 8745188

Claim:
A system for managing one or more changes in a datacenter, comprising: a configuration management database comprising a plurality of configuration items, wherein each of the plurality of configuration items describes at least one of a plurality of resources of the datacenter, and wherein the configuration management database models one or more relationships between the plurality of configuration items; and a change management engine comprising one or more physical processors that are programmed to execute one or more computer readable instructions that cause the change management engine to: receive a request proposing a change that adds, removes, or modifies a resource of the datacenter; identify one or more configuration items that represent one or more resources of the datacenter that will be impacted by the proposed change, wherein the one or more identified configuration items are at least a subset of the plurality of configuration items; determine one or more domain-specific inclusions or exclusions that are tuned for removing information unnecessary to determining whether or not to approve the proposed change; determine one or more heuristics or rules that are tuned to a particular implementation for the configuration management database; generate a navigational traversal for the one or more identified configuration items based on the one or more relationships, the one or more determined domain-specific inclusions or exclusions, and the one or more determined heuristics or rules; determine whether the one or more resources include a resource that is predetermined to be essential or critical to the datacenter based on the generated navigational traversal; output an indication that the proposed change is approved in response to a determination that the one or more resources do not include a resource that is predetermined to be essential or critical to the datacenter; and output a change approval request in response to a determination that the one or more resources include a resource that has been predetermined to be essential or critical to the datacenter.