Utilizing CMDB groups in Change Management

[kelliclarke0226]

Background: We are just starting our ServiceNow journey, and do not currently have a CMDB, so aside from best practices, we are interested in hearing about what has or has NOT worked for those that have been using Change Management in ServiceNow and the SOW.

We are the central IT agency that supports other State Agencies IT needs. We are planning to use the Company field to represent the Agency name.  I'm hopeful that even someone that is not Government would be able to help if they have different departments or locations they separate out.

Questions: Do you utilize the creation of CMDB Groups?  Groups that would be based upon device type, owner, location, maintenance windows, etc.?  How do you keep your groups up to date whenever a new set of CIs get imported in during discovery (or a set of CIs are decommissioned)? 

I am interested in how others have set this up and how they are used for change management related items, like for change blackout, maintenance schedule or even changes themselves against a very large number of CI's.

One example of a change that would be against a very large set of CI's would be a change for PRODUCTION Windows patching that is for every Windows server we support.  There are some groups of servers that are excluded from that group, as they have a different schedule need.  Similarly, we do the same thing for Non-Production servers. How would the CI's be listed in the change for your organization?

There are also specific maintenance windows that would be set up for certain agencies that are different than everyone else, so again, I would have a list of things that are associated with that Company/Agency that we wouldn't want touched except during that window.

Possible example of groups I was thinking of, with Agency A and Agency B being entries in the Company table.

Agency A-

  Prod servers

   - Application Servers

   - Database Servers

   - Windows Servers

   - Linux Servers

   - Other

  Non-prod servers

   - Application Servers

   - Database Servers

   - Windows Servers

   - Linux Servers

   - Other

  Pilot Workstations

  All (other) workstations

Agency B- 

  (same list as above)