CSDM Relationships for Dynamic CI Groups

[Carolyn Rast]

CSDM Gurus -

We are in the early stages of building out our services.  We intend to direct the "Owners" and other personas to the Digital Portfolio Manager (DPM).  Currently we do not have Service Mapping implemented.  Our services were initially deployed as tag-based services and are now dynamic CI groups.

Our problem is in the relationships - Technical Service Offering to CIs - DPM is looking for Relationships [cmdb_rel_ci] that don't exist.  Is there any OOTB functionality (other than Service Mapping) which automatically create these relationships? 

We implemented a script to create the missing relationships and are tying it into CSDM Data Sync.  Is there a better answer - something we missed?

[Daniel Borkowi1 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Carolyn Rast , CSDM doesn't includes a direct relationship between Technical Service Offerings. Either there is a relationship to an Application Service or there is a Dynamic CI group grouping Infrastructure CI (Infrastructure Services like Network Services, Server Services). In case of the Application Service there are all Infrastructure CIs related to. 

The relationships beginning from Application Services downwards, can only be populated automatically with Service Mapping OOTB. Other approaches would be manually adding Infra CIs to the Application Service. If you don't want to use Service Mapping or manual approach and maybe have a other source for these informations you can either use a Service Graph connector (if existing) for the source system. This is also able to populate all the relationships. Instead of Service Graph connector you can use IntegrationHub ETL to import the data with populating relationships. 

Other option is, like you did, creating a script. If your CIs maybe have some data which you can use (maybe naming convention) you can automatically create relationships. But I assume that this structure will than be flat and not representing your environment (e.g. representing clusters).

A last approach I have in mind: If you are able to tag CIs (e.g. each CI can be tagged to which Application Service it belongs by populating the table cmdb_key_value) you can use tag based Service Mapping too. With this approach, ServiceNow can populate the relationships between physical CIs like Discovery and pattern based Service Mapping would do (depends on quality and completeness of your data).

Greets
Daniel

Please mark reply as Helpful/Correct, if applicable. Thanks!

[JakubS]

Hi Daniel,

I would have a question related to the scheme you shared - we are trying to relate netgear devices to TSO through dynamic CI groups but there's still a piece that I must be missing. We have the TSOs and the Dynamic groups (and they are populated by a query) created and related, but no relationships are created. Would you what I am missing? Do we need a script or business rule that would actually created the relationships between TSOs and CIs.

Thank you,

Jakub

[Carolyn Rast]

Thank you @Daniel Borkowi1!

I have come to realize I am missing the Application Service record!  I assumed the Dynamic CI Group WAS/IS the Application Service.  DPM displays the service IFF I build an Application Service as a Manual Service and use the the Dynamic CI Group as the population method.  This construct get past the DPM filter which specifically removes the Dynamic CI Group from the display.

[Mathew Hillyard]

Just to follow up on this - a Dynamic CI Group is in the Application Service hierarchy and so is a type of Application Service. If you populate Dynamic CI Groups with a CMDB Group then all the related CIs will appear in the Service Configuration Item Association [svc_ci_assoc] table - as will all the CIs related to any other Application Services that are populated (with Calculated App Services you must link at least one CI to the App Service via a CI Relationship, with Mapped App Services you do the same then click the "Update with changes from CMDB" link). This not only gives you every CI and the App Service(s) and Dynamic CI Group(s) it belongs to - it also supports the refresh of impacted services functionality (one of the other improvements that CSDM enables). Not sure however whether DPM can be pointed at the Service Config Item Assoc table.

Service Mapping will not create CI Relationships with Service Offerings as they start from App Service down - that is still for now a manual task (or something that can be automated via custom development).