Applications in the CMDB

[Brian Lancaster]

I have not had a lot of experience when it comes to best practice with CMDB.  I'm working for a new company and they are starting out building out the ServiceNow Environment.  So here we have application and each application has several modules.  We will be using Incident management to start with and will eventually use Problem and Change management.  Each application module will have a different approver for change management so we need these pick able as a CI.  We also need these for incident and problem so we can determine ware an issue lies (example instead of the issue possibly being on the server maybe it was related to the code that was pushed out of a particular module).  So my question is what table do I put these applications and their modules in?  I was thinking of use Business Applications for the overall application and then Application Services for the specific modules within the applications but the CSDM white paper says not to use CIs in the business service table as operational CIs.

[s4scott]

The application service CI should be the top level of the specific installation of the product. It is key to event management, so think in terms of impact, i.e. don't combine things in an Application Service that aren't in some way impacting to one another.

To address your module problem this is by no means the only solutions, but here is an option based on my personal experience and understanding of the CSDM:

1. Create Application CIs using a type field. The application can have four types: Platform, Business Application, Infrastructure Application, and Module. Doing this allows for the application CI representing the platform or business application to be related to the modules it hosts. The benefit here is you can use a single software model for both if desired. The top level Application CI is related to an Application Service CI. Example:

Application CI module => Application CI platform => Application Service

Requisitioning module => SAP Financials -Northwest Div PROD => SAP - Northwest Div PROD

[mikkojuola]

Hi all,

This is a really interesting topic. I'm sure many companies are struggling with it. The Design domain of the CSDM kind of includes this Application module as a "Platform app" type of Business Application, but putting it there and NOT to use it as an operational CI creates a lot of "duplication" and confusion downstream.

I know one customer who decided to use Business Apps as operational CIs despite the recommendation in the CSDM. So, this is definitely not the correct answer when it comes to CSDM, but seems to work. So, they only model the "production environment" as Business Applications while Application Service and downwards can represent other environments also. In this model, they also decided to create application modules as Business Applications for selected platforms (but not all by default).

Following the recommendation from s4scott and the approach taken by one of our customers, I could add this "type" on the Business Application class (or add choices to one of the existing type fields, like the architecture type for example).

Darin has a point too, keep it simple. Only add complexity with a proper use / business case.

I hope Scott and others from the ServiceNow's CSDM team would elaborate on this more in their future use case examples. I'm not fully committed to the idea of only using Business Apps for design / enterprise architecture use cases.

All-in-all, before there is a bulletproof model for Application Modules, I think it's important simply to pick your model and stick with it. Once you have a model, then it's also easier to change it later.