VM's - Hardware or Software in servicenow

[NevilleLee]

Hello Community.

Do you consider Virtual Machines (VM) a hardware or software class?

If either, do you have a rationale?

[SK Chand Basha]

Hi @NevilleLee 

Virtual machine software can run programs and operating systems, store data, connect to networks, and do other computing functions, and requires maintenance such as updates and system monitoring.

Virtual Machines (VMs) can be considered both hardware and software, depending on the perspective.

From a hardware standpoint, VMs are software emulations of physical hardware. They utilize underlying physical hardware resources such as CPU, memory, storage, and network interfaces to create virtualized computing environments. 

From a software perspective, VMs are managed and controlled by virtualization software or hypervisors. This software layer is responsible for creating, managing, and running the virtual machines. It provides the necessary functionalities for resource allocation, isolation, and interaction between the VMs and the underlying hardware.

It would be a Asset if it need for financial information

It would be a CI if it's something you configure and might need a change to make change the configuration.

Mark it Helpful and Accept Solution!! If this helps you to understand .

[Niklas Peterson]

Hi @NevilleLee,
 

I would argue that it is neither. It's a CI class that resides between Hardware and Application layers in the CMDB. It's part of the virtualization layer that is hosted on hardware and is hosting Applications.

The Software would be something that enables you to create Virtual Machine Instances.

Regards,
Niklas

[SteveMacWWT]

I suggest following what ServiceNow does when using Discovery. Hopefully this account for all the perspectives of your team.

In short, for how to represent them in the CMDB the answer is all of the above, and more. Note that this does not go into a philosophical discussion of whether it is software or hardware. That is a discussion that comes down to opinion. 

I'll go through this using VMware as the example architecture. 

There are sets of CIs that get represented in this case: The VM host, the VM that the Host manages, and the Server that is running inside of that VM.

Each of these is represented in the CMDB by its own CI class. 

VM Host: This is the top level server that contains everything that underneath it. For this example it is a CI of class ESX Server (cmdb_ci_server-esx_server).

The VM Host has software running on it that manages all the VMs which are represented as a Running Process - this is not a CI. 

The VMs are the 'containers' that get managed by the software on the VM Host. For this VMware example the containers are of CI Class VMware Virtual Machine Instance (cmdb_ci_vmware_instance). These containers represent the 'virtual hardware' that an OS runs on. The CI has information about the resources that have been allocated by the VM host, and should be thought of as the virtual hardware that an OS runs on. 

The Server (which should be thought of as the OS, in this case Windows) that runs on the virtual hardware is represented by a CI of Class Windows Server (cmdb_ci_server_windows, which extends Server (cmdb_ci_server) which itself extends Computer (cmdb_ci_computer) which itself extends Hardware (cmdb_ci_hardware)). I highlight the last one to show how it can be thought of as Hardware. 

So from a ServiceNow proscribed CMDB perspective (I.e. Discovery) it is represented as multiple objects, each of which is its own entity. 

If you only need to track the Server that is running an OS and are not using Discovery, it should be tracked as 'hardware'. This keeps the CI with all the other Servers (OS) that are running directly on physical hardware and let's you manage them in the same way. 

ps. I stupidly thought I could answer this on my phone, so please forgive spelling mistakes especially for technical terms & classes. 

[Anwer]

Great explanation. The only issue I have is that ServiceNow automatically creates a VMWare Hardware Model and the HAM Pro module keeps asking me to provide a model number as if its a traditional piece of hardware.

What should I do?