Difference Between Switches and IP Switches in CMDB

[Rahul Gaur]

In Vancouver ServiceNow CMDB instance I see 2 tables with router and similarly 2 table for switches.

Please help me understand what the difference between both router tables and switches table is?

Also, which one to be used to populate CMDB and which should not be used?

Routers –

Service Now Table Label (Class)	Service Now Table Name
IP Router	cmdb_ci_ip_router
Router	cmdb_ci_router

Switches –

Service Now Table Label (Class)	Service Now Table Name
IP Switch	cmdb_ci_ip_switch
Switch	cmdb_ci_switch

[CasperJT]

Hi Rahul,

The cmdb_ci_router and cmdb_ci_switch are both extensions of Virtual Machine Object, so likely they are intended to be used in conjuction with cloud / virtualization type objects.

cmdb_ci_ip_router and cmdb_ci_ip_switch both extend the Network Gear class which indicates these are the correct classes to use for network switches and routers.

If you are not familiar with the CI Class Manager I recommend checking it out. It visualizes the CMDB hiearchy as well as allows you to manage health and identification properties (and more)

Additionally ServiceNow have started to describe the different classes in the CMDB here: CMDB tables descriptions 

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Casper

[Ashok Sasidhara]

IP Switch and IP Router are the child classes of network gear class. These are the classes which are commonly used to populate network switch and router data.

Router and Switch classes are child of virtual machine objects class. I have never seen them populated with data. There is not much documentation about them also. It is possible that they are legacy classes which are no longer meant to be used.