How to relate Technical Service Offering to Dynamic Group?

[NikEng1]

Hi,

So I am currently trying to implement the CSDM, focusing on Business Applications, Application Services and Technical Services.

I've gone trough most of the documentation and learning about the CSDM, but when trying it out I can't seem to understand how Technical Service Offerings are to be related to CI:s.

My View is that I have a business application. This Business Application relies on an application service. Since I do not have service mapping I will be using a dynamic CI group for the application service.

In the Application Service there are CI:s. In my case these are database instances and servers. The servers are the results of delivery of the technical service offering "Linux Hosting Small". In that sense, I am not setting up direct relationships between the application service and the technical service offering, but this relationship is indirect through the CI:s.

I was thinking something like this:

In other words, the technical service offering contains all servers, across multiple application services. 

My questions are:

Is this correct? I've seen the case where people instead create a relationship between a TSO and and application service. But I would assume that would only be relevant in the cases where the offering is an entire environment. In my organization, the application managers "buys" technical services like servers, backup, databases etc as separate pieces to make up their application environment. Will my  model still adhere to the CSDM?

How do I relate the TSO to a dynamic CI group? I am looking at the form for the Technical Service Offering and I can't find a button/option to set up and relate a dynamic CI group. The form has the usual CI relationship pane. Do I just create the dynamic CI group and manually set up relationships between it and the TSO in the cmdb_rel_ci table?

Since a server as a CI can be related to multipleTSO:s (like monitoring, the server itself, backup etc) I was thinking of having a related list of service offerings on the server CI form, where I can set up a m2m relationship between servers and TSO:s, the leveraging the related list conditions of the CMDB query builder to capture the servers into the dynamic groups for each TSO. Meaning the "Monitoring" TSO Dynamic Group would query the cmdb_si_server table to CI:s where the related list contains the "monitoring " TSO. Would this be a good idea? Any other suggestions?

Any help or just general feedback would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

[Barry Kant · Accepted solution]

Good day,

Is this correct? I've seen the case where people instead create a relationship between a TSO and and application service. But I would assume that would only be relevant in the cases where the offering is an entire environment. In my organization, the application managers "buys" technical services like servers, backup, databases etc as separate pieces to make up their application environment. Will my  model still adhere to the CSDM?

Yes this is correct. It reflects the scope of support. So a Windows offering can be related dynamically to all windows servers. but an application service can be supported to an Application Support offering. Both will do and both are conceptually ok. 
The situation in your organization is basically that you have underpinning services for your applications. That is also correct. That is nicely reflected in SPM (service owner workspace). 

How do I relate the TSO to a dynamic CI group? I am looking at the form for the Technical Service Offering and I can't find a button/option to set up and relate a dynamic CI group. The form has the usual CI relationship pane. Do I just create the dynamic CI group and manually set up relationships between it and the TSO in the cmdb_rel_ci table?
In the Dynamic CI Group you have a CMDB Group reference. In the CMDB Group record you can define the query about the scope of that Dynamic CI Group eg:
all windows servers that are operational in production

Since a server as a CI can be related to multipleTSO:s (like monitoring, the server itself, backup etc) I was thinking of having a related list of service offerings on the server CI form, where I can set up a m2m relationship between servers and TSO:s, the leveraging the related list conditions of the CMDB query builder to capture the servers into the dynamic groups for each TSO. Meaning the "Monitoring" TSO Dynamic Group would query the cmdb_si_server table to CI:s where the related list contains the "monitoring " TSO. Would this be a good idea? Any other suggestions?
This is more challenging in Quebec as 1 Service Offering is synced back to the related CIs. 
What you can do is a depends on relation ship to the other offerings. And you could reflect that via a related list. (not sure if that is needed). Alternativally you can create health compliance rules that auto-creates relations by tasks. Not instantly, but it will do. Not as standard as it can be however. If you are not on Quebec you can create multiple TSOs for your CIs.

Best regards,

Barry

[NikEng1]

Thank you Barry,

One follow-up question;

How is the TSO related to the Dynamic Ci Group?

When setting up application services, there is the "populate service" tab where I can see the dynamic CI group.

The same type of wizard does not exist for TSO. It's created from the regular form. But there is no reference field on the TSO form to either the Dynamic Group or the CMDB group. Nor is there any reference to the TSO from any of the group forms. So I can set up the TSO, the dynamic CI group and the CMDB group, but how will it relate to the TSO? 

When the dynamic Ci group is added to the application service from the "wizard", a relationship is automatically added to the cmdb_rel_ci table. I'm guessing the same type of relationship should be set up for technical service offerings? Should I add this manually?

[Ahmet Damli]

Hi Barry,

i just figured out following. When i create a Dynamic CI Group, it appears also in the "Application Service" list. And when i create a Application service which is populated with dynamic CIs, it also appears in the "Dynamic CI Group" list. So is there any difference between a "Dynamic CI Group" and a "Application service (based on dynamic CIs)? For me from a technical view they are totally identical (its the "same" record). Am i right?

[Dominic5]

This video explains HOW to relate Dynamic CI groups to Technical Service Offerings (around the 21 minutes mark): (1) CMDB Health Deep Dive - CSDM Dynamic CI groups & fixing data required for audit and incident - Y...
... as I don't think you can yet do this via Service Builder.