How to relate Technical Service Offering to Dynamic Group?

NikEng1 · ‎06-29-2021

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 · ‎06-29-2021

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

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JenniferS777 · ‎12-12-2023

Hey Dominic5, I have reviewed the video you linked but I am not finding the View "Service Workspace" do you know what enables that? I am implementing Dynamic CI Groups and this one is a gap.

Dominic5 · ‎12-13-2023

I don't have a "Service Workspace" view either, but Default view works (looks different in Utah though):

Barry Kant · ‎06-30-2021

That is just a CI relation.

The TSO will be related to a Dynamic CI Group via a contains CI Relation.

NikEng1 · ‎06-30-2021

Thank you Barry!

rafi438 · ‎08-24-2023

Hi Barry,

Thanks for the explanation.

Is there an out of the box option to visualize the relationship directly between Service Offerings and Configuration Items?
Currently I can see that CIs are visible only from Dynamic CI Group record.

Thanks in advance.