Dynamic relationships in CMDB

[Elisa Mena]

Hi community,

I have a question regarding services and CIs. We have a use case, where servers with a specific tag are backed up and I'd like to know if there is a way to dynamically create and maintain the relationship with the service offering.

We have created a dynamic CI group, with a group containing that query, but the dependency map does not show what is contained in the dynamic CI group. 

What worries me more is, if I go to a server within that group, it's also not showing the relationship with the dynamic group and the offering consumed. 😞 Even if we can use it in the operations to add CIs, I do not like that I can't see that this server is consuming the service.

Is there something I'm missing? Is this not the right way of building the relationship? 

I also would want to create some Services that are consumed by a whole class (and update everytime a CI is added). How to perform that? It feels that there should be a easier way to draw this in the cmdb.

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @Elisa Mena 

You are correct - Dynamic CI Groups and their CIs are contained within the Service Configuration Item Association [svc_ci_assoc] table. These relationships do not appear in the CI Relations Formatter or the Dependency Views UI because they're not linked via CI Relationships.

You can get a list of these relationship by reporting on the Service Configuration Item Association table (or create a database view and join Service Offering to CI Relationship to Service Configuration Item Association to get the end to end view in a list layout). This will show you which App Services and DCGs a CI is linked to - but in a list view, not a graphical representation.

I have attempted to re-engineer the dependency views UI via scripting in the Dependency Types module [ngbsm_script] - navigate to All > Dependency Views > Dependency Types, creating a custom dependency view script, but as the UI views are based on CI Relationships and Dynamic CI Groups don't use them, I was unable to show the full view. I think this needs some platform re-engineering to bring these relationships into the graphical domain.

I agree this is a gap in the platform currently, and I would recommend creating an Idea to request ServiceNow to fix this: support.servicenow.com/ideas 

[Elisa Mena]

Hi Mathew,

Indeed, and it's a shame from an operational perspective as it can lead to poor risk management when assessing change :(.

Another option would be to be able to create relationships with the class or CMDB group.

[Mathew Hillyard]

"from an operational perspective as it can lead to poor risk management when assessing change"

Note that if doing CSDM correctly this is not the case - when calculating impacted app services, on Incident and Change, with the relevant application properties activated, then all App Services and DCGs are brought in for each Affected CI so a correct risk posture can be obtained. The only gap is the visualisation within the CI Relations or Dependency Views UI as mentioned.

[Barry Kant]

Hi all,

to slightly distinguish the impact analysis outcomes:
from an operational point of view it is needed to understand the impacted offerings that are consuming these CIs. 
The TSO (DCIG) is to manage these CIs. The managed information (groups) is synced to the CIs this way to assign to the right team. Meaning it is per se expected to have a TSO as an outcome of impact analysis. 

That at least is the idea. Are there scenarios that will require TSOs as outcomes of impact analysis?

BR,
Barry