Assets, Configuration Items, and the concepts next door.
Asset, Configuration Item, Artifact, Component, Allocation, and MRU are not synonyms, and conflating them is how a CMDB and an asset register drift apart. Here is the distinction Omnitam draws, with worked examples of where the things you meet every day actually land.
Every Asset is a CI. Not every CI is an Asset.
A Configuration Item is anything you track in the CMDB to understand and control your estate. An Asset is the subset that is billable, data-bearing, or runs a workload, the things ITAM and finance care about. In Omnitam the two are classified per resource at ingest, so one record can be counted as both.
What you manage
Supporting infrastructure, networking, identity, policy, and template configuration: a CMDB CI. It has a class, a stable identity, an owner, a lifecycle state, and relationships to other CIs. Every discovered resource is a CI, so this is the broadest set.
What you own or pay for
A discrete, billable, data-bearing, or workload-running inventory item: the ITAM view. It carries ownership, a cost center, license and entitlement context, and a financial lifecycle. Assets are a subset of CIs, never a superset.
How they differ, dimension by dimension.
| Dimension | Configuration Item | Asset |
|---|---|---|
| Primary question | What is it and what does it depend on? | What do we own, pay for, or run on it? |
| Owner | CMDB / Configuration Manager | ITAM Manager, Asset / Service Owner |
| Scope | The whole estate, including infra and policy | Billable / data-bearing / workload items |
| Key attributes | Class, identity, state, relationships | Owner, cost center, license, contract, lifecycle |
| Relationships | First-class (depends-on, runs-on, member-of) | Optional; inherited from the underlying CI |
| Financial view | Not required | Central: cost, entitlement, true-up, reclaim |
| Set size (per account) | Largest (every discovered resource) | A subset of CIs |
| In Omnitam | classification = configuration_item | classification = asset |
In the data model these are the two values of the per-resource classification field; a resource typed as both is counted in each total, never double-counted within one.
An asset, and the concepts next door.
An asset has three properties: identifiable ownership or accountability, a lifecycle you manage (acquire, deploy, operate, retire), and financial or contractual significance. You can count it, put a cost against it, and someone is responsible for it. That is narrower than a few neighboring ideas you will meet.
Configuration Item
Anything worth tracking in the CMDB for service delivery and dependency mapping. Every asset is a CI, but not every CI is an asset: many CIs are logical or relationship constructs with no cost of their own.
Artifact
A file, image, document, or template. Evidence or a blueprint, not a managed, owned resource with a lifecycle.
Component
A constituent part of software, tracked for composition and risk, but not independently owned or licensed.
Allocation / unit
A subdivision of an asset, a slice of something you own, not an asset in its own right.
Where each item lands.
The same test applied to things you meet every day. The Type icons match the AWS capabilities matrix below.
| Item | Type | Why |
|---|---|---|
| EC2 & compute | ||
| EC2 instance | Asset | Discrete, billable, lifecycle-managed compute with a clear owner. |
| Elastic IP | Asset | A static public IPv4 address you reserve and are billed for, most of all when it sits unattached. Finite, allocated, and owned: a network asset. |
| Auto-scaling group (ASG) | CI | A logical orchestration construct that manages a fluctuating set of EC2 instances. It has no cost of its own; the instances it launches are the assets. Track it as a grouping CI. |
| Security group | CI | A stateful virtual firewall attached to instances and network interfaces. It shapes traffic but runs no workload and carries no cost; track it as a networking CI. |
| Subnet | CI | A logical IP range that places resources in one availability zone of a VPC. It has no cost of its own; the resources launched into it are the assets. A networking CI. |
| Other assets & CIs | ||
| Software license | Asset | The archetypal SAM asset: the contractual right to use, with cost and compliance weight. |
| Seat within a license | Allocation | A subdivision of the license asset, assignable to a user. You count and reconcile seats, but the license is the asset. |
| IP address | Asset | Finite, allocated, and managed via IPAM, sometimes with cost (elastic or public IPs). Generally tracked as a network asset. |
| Domain name | Asset | Owned, renewable, and contractual, with real financial value: a digital asset. |
| SSL/TLS certificate | Asset | Owned, expiring, and renewable, with compliance weight. You track it and alert on its renewal like any other asset. |
| Software composition | ||
| SBOM file | Artifact | A document describing composition. Evidence and metadata, not a managed resource. |
| Library in the SBOM | Component | A software dependency tracked by version, where it runs, and its license data. Not independently owned or licensed, so not an asset. |
| Container image | Artifact | A versioned, immutable build artifact. The running container or pod is the CI; the image is the blueprint it was built from. |
| Templates & operating system | ||
| CloudFormation template | Artifact | A blueprint that provisions resources. The resources it creates are the assets and CIs; the template itself is evidence of how. |
| Operating System instance | Asset | A running, deployed operating system on a host: lifecycle-managed and frequently licensed. |
| Operating System image | Artifact | A golden or base image used to create instances. A blueprint, not a deployed thing. |
| Operating System package | Component | Part of installed-software inventory: a constituent of the OS instance, not a standalone asset. |
| Operating System patch | Artifact | A fix that gets applied. A change action and record, not an owned resource. |
The full list, every AWS resource type Omnitam discovers with its Asset or Configuration Item classification and tag support, is in the AWS capabilities matrix.
Managed Resource Unit (MRU) and the wider model.
The classification above answers how you manage a thing. Two more ideas frame it: what the thing is before you classify it, and the structure that sits around the classified items.
Managed Resource Unit MRU
What exists in the cloud: the provider-native object (an EC2 instance, an S3 bucket, an ARN). This is the Managed Resource Unit Omnitam discovers, classifies, and meters, the raw input. Asset, CI, Artifact, Component, and Allocation are how you manage it, not what it is.
Service
A business or technical service composed of CIs. ITIL's top-level abstraction: the thing your users actually consume.
Relationship / dependency
The edges between CIs, depends-on, runs-on, member-of. First-class in a CMDB, not an afterthought.
Environment
A dev / staging / production grouping that scopes and compares the same workload across its lifecycle.
Entitlement / consumable
A countable right, such as support incidents or API credits: the org-level cousin of an allocation.
Event / change record
A patch, a drift result, an incident. A change action or record, filed as an Artifact or a CI, not an owned resource.
See your own CI and Asset counts.
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