Life Cycle Mapping on "operational status"??

[Community Alums]

Talking with a client about switching from legacy status to life status we discovered some actions I can not understand the logic for.

In the Life Cycle Map table I see that some of the legacy fields are "Operational Status" that is mapped to "Configuration Item - Design -Build"

As far as I see it Operational Status is not part of the Life Cycle but are primarely used for when you set a server in maintanence mode (to avoid alerts from monitoring).
But the BR changes a server to Design Build when you switch Operational Status to Non-operational, even though the server is installed and in use.

The mapping is an OOB solution, but as I see it "operational Status" should not be mapped at all.

Can anyone clarify the logic behind that mapping?

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @Jens,

Operational status is just that - CI's operational state. Its primary purpose is not for servers in maintenance mode (there are many CI classes that are not servers) but to reflect the CI state for use in operational processes.

Design/Build life cycle represents a CI that is not yet operational, hence the mapping from operational status Non-operational.

The most common status fields mapped to lifecycles for the CMDB are operational status and install status (which happens to be the primary field on Business Applications).

I hope this helps!

Mat

[Community Alums]

My example with servers in maintenance was just an example.

But I really struggle to find the documentation for Operational Status.

And i wonder why the first stage/state in the life cycle is chosen when you change the value to non-operational.

The Operational Status is used for Application Services, and not long ago there was an article here talking about Operational status (but I can not find it now)

I know operational status is used in CMDB health dashboard as a filter to exclude CIs
And a client asked me why it changed the life cycle values when set a server to non-operational.

[Mathew Hillyard]

@Community Alums have you read the CSDM 4.0 White Paper, which goes into Life Cycles in some depth? It could help with understanding.

The whole idea of the Life Cycle Mappings is to automatically set the Life Cycle when the Operational status changes (and vice versa if reverse sync is active). Once Life Cycles are activated, then a Life Cycle value will be populated in every CI (and other tables). At this point you can choose to use Life Cycles instead of any status values, and ignore status values completely, but that is quite a bit of work as the status values will be in use in reporting and many other places.

The first stage in the life of any CI is went it is first "created", which is almost always in a pre-production state, so is non-operational. The CSDM White Paper shows the life cycle for various tables, including CIs.

I hope this helps!

Mat

[Community Alums]

I know what life cycle mapping is.

It is the one rule I dont get the logic about.

Why do it switch to the beginning of the life cycle. you can be non-operational in other life cycle stages than the first.
To me it looks like ServiceNow took the easy way out.