CSDM question: Visualization from Technical services

[Ravish Shetty]

Hi all,

I am new to CSDM and have a few questions. Our ServiceNow instance does not have Discovery and Service Mapping.

Question 1: I would like to understand if the visualization I see from the Dependency map is correct. My understanding is that Technical Services relate to Service Offering (via direct reference relation), Service Offering relates to Dynamic CI group ('Contains' relationship using CI relationship), and Dynamic CI group contains the Infrastructure CIs.

Question 2: In the dependency map, I do not see all the CIs under the Dynamic CI group. Is there a better way to see this data, or do we need to open the form view of the Dynamic CI group through the dependency map view to see the CIs under the Dynamic CI group?

Question 3: Is there a way to see which Application Services depend on a given Technical Service? I cannot find this via the dependency map view. Is this use case not handled via CSDM, or did I not define a few relations correctly? Below is a demo setup that I have.

Thanks,

Ravish

[Ravish Shetty]

Bump

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @Ravish Shetty 

Question 1: Yes, this is correct.

Question 2: 

To see the CIs when looking at the Dynamic CI Group, you cannot view them directly in the tree in Dependency Views. This is because both the CI Relations formatter and Dependency Views rely on CI Relationships between CIs, and a Dynamic CI Group and its CIs are not related via CI Relationships, but in the Service Configuration Item Association [svc_ci_assoc] table.

However, if you select the Dynamic CI Group in the Dependency View window and click the Details button, the Associated CIs section will appear at the bottom of the screen, which shows the members of the CMDB group related to the Dynamic CI Group. You can also view this from the Dynamic CI Group form by adding the Service Config Items Related list (there are 3 - it's the bottom one in the list of related items when you click Configure > Related Lists).

The real issue is viewing from the opposite direction - from a CI you cannot view which Dynamic CI Groups it belongs to and therefore which Service Offerings and Services it is a member of, from either CI Relations or Dependency Views. I created an Idea to ask ServiceNow to fix this.

Question 3:

This is because Service and Service Offering is a reference relationship (a Service Offering's Parent value is the Service) and not a CI Relationship. You can view the full tree from a Service downwards but not in the opposite direction - so you can see all App Services that a Service uses, but cannot see all Services that rely upon an App Service.

The map in your picture above appears to have CI Relationships between a Dynamic CI Group and its CIs. This is incorrect. They are handled automatically when a CMDB Group is defined with queries that related to one or more CI, and the Dynamic CI Group references that CMDB Group. As mentioned above, this data is stored in the Service Configuration Item Association [svc_ci_assoc] table. Do not define CI relationships for a Dynamic CI Group's CIs.

I hope this helps!

Mat

[Ravish Shetty]

Thanks Mathew for your response. Regarding your response for Question 3,

"The map in your picture above appears to have CI Relationships between a Dynamic CI Group and its CIs. This is incorrect. They are handled automatically when a CMDB Group is defined with queries that related to one or more CI, and the Dynamic CI Group references that CMDB Group. As mentioned above, this data is stored in the Service Configuration Item Association [svc_ci_assoc] table. Do not define CI relationships for a Dynamic CI Group's CIs."

The Application Service here is defined as Dynamic CI group. Although the Application Service as Dynamic CI group has all the CI's under them, we do not have the understanding of how the individual CI's are related to each other (Fileshare to Windows, App Server to My SQL, etc.) and that is why we have this way of definition. What is the proper way to define this?

[Mathew Hillyard]

Ah yes, I see that you have what looks like an Application Service Map but instead from a Dynamic CI Group. The advice with this situation is that if you have implemented Discovery then you should be using Application Services and not Dynamic CI Groups. The use case for a Dynamic CI Group with a selection of related CIs that make up an "application service" is when there is no automated discovery (yet) so you effectively have a list of CIs and no relationships. You won't see relationships in this view between a Dynamic CI Group and its CIs so I assume you have related them with CI Relationships, which isn't correct. 

The purpose of a Dynamic CI Group with a CMDB that is populated via automated discovery tools is to group together related infrastructure based on conditions - e.g. "All Windows Server 2022 Servers in Poland". If you wish to build out a service map, use Application Services instead. The same CI can belong to both a Dynamic CI Group and more than one Application Service - although it's not best practice to have one CI support many Application Services as if that CI has an issue multiple services will be impacted.

I hope this helps!
Mat