CIS – Data Foundations (CMDB & CSDM) Exam: Key Preparation Tips

Swapna Abburi · 3 weeks ago

Recently, I have been approached by several associates on LinkedIn and Teams asking about my experience with the CIS – Data Foundations exam and its complexity. To help those planning to attempt this certification, I have summarized some important points that can make your preparation more effective.

1. Start with the Basics: What, Why, and How

Before diving into advanced topics, ensure you understand the fundamentals:

What is a CI? What is an Asset?
How do CI and Asset relate to each other?
Why is a strong CMDB critical?
How CMDB supports other key ServiceNow applications like Incident, Change, Risk, and Operations Management etc.

Understanding these relationships helps you see the bigger picture of how CMDB drives business value.

Sample Use Cases:

Routing incidents to the correct support group using CMDB.
Determining approval groups for changes.
Assessing business impact from incidents or changes.

2. CMDB Features and Capabilities: The Three Pillars

Ingest:
Know the data sources and ingestion methods in ServiceNow:

Discovery – Types: IP-based, Network, Cloud.
Service Mapping – understanding of different methods, Top-Down (ML & Pattern), Tag-based mapping, Dynamic CI groups or manual.
Service Graph Connectors – Why they matter and steps for ingestion.
Agent Client Collector (ACC) – When ACC is preferable over other discovery methods.
Integration Hub ETL – Key steps.
Import Sets – How CMDB data can be ingested using Import Sets and transform maps following IRE.

Understand the role of the Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) and how rules like Identification, Reconciliation (static/dynamic), and data source rules are configured.

Governance:
Familiarize yourself with the CMDB Health Dashboard and the 3 Cs configuration:

Completeness
Correctness
Compliance

Learn how CI Class Manager, Health Inclusion Rules, Data manager and scheduled jobs work together. Explore handling data discrepancies like duplicate CIs, CI reclassification. Attestation and remediation tasks. Don’t miss the OOTB capabilities with Now Assist for CMDB.

Insights:
Discover how to extract and use CMDB data for better decision-making using below features:

CMDB Query Builder
Unified Map
CMDB & CSDM Data Foundations Dashboard
Playbooks
NLQ Search

3. Understanding the CSDM Framework

Know the five stages of CSDM, the CI classes involved in each stage, and the products/applications required:

Ideation & Strategy
Design & Planning
Build & Integration
Service Delivery
Service Consumption

Also, understand the approach to start CMDB data modeling using CSDM through Foundation, Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly stages, and the benefits realized after each stage.

Finally, while going through on-demand courses and simulation labs, focus on these areas to strengthen your understanding and improve your chances of success. Most importantly, the Knowledge Checks/Quizzes after every topic in ServiceNow University are extremely helpful for understanding the exam format and sample questions.

#CMDB #CIS - Data Foundations