Relating application services to servers

[Tony Collins]

If I want to use OOB capabilities with CSDM, what relationship must I use between an application service (cmdb_ci_service_discovered) and a server (cmdb_ci_server)? 

In my review of the documentation and forum, it seems that some folks model

1. from the application service to the application to a server
2. from the application service to the server

I doubt that OOB capabilities will support both models.

Thanks for any information.

Tony

[nyancer3]

Glad you found that helpful!

[Tony Collins]

Much thanks for your last two paragraphs that address my main concern and observation.  How does the CSDM documentation line up with reality?  I really appreciate your example around Change Management.

Related to your last sentence - for me, the main value of CSDM is only when OOB apps match the CSDM.   If we need to have data in multiple places and heavily configure/customize OOB apps, then, the value of CSDM is significantly less.

[nyancer3]

Absolutely agree. I expect that there is going to be some attention paid in the next few releases to shoring up not only the CSDM (IMO the way they've got service offerings and services is backward in the way they relate to infrastructure and application services) but also the platform apps that will begin to consume the CSDM data.

It looks like the behavior seen in Change was an oversight. The service offerings mapped to app services will show up in the Impacted Services/CIs related list, so the impact is visible just not where you would expect.

[Amanda Buggy]

Several ServiceNow® products, such as Application Portfolio Management (APM), depend on the preceding relationships. For example, business application “consumes” application service.

These relationships are critical. Without them, some features, such as the Technology Portfolio Management risk assessment, don’t work.

I do love they give us this now in the CSDM. But I think the bit that answers the original question is actually at the top of the orange section.

Application Service -depends on-> Application -runs on-> Server CI

The question on if they will BOTH models work. I think the answer is it depends on what bits of Service Now you are using, there are now different Use Cases available, eg Incident, Change, APM and you need to make sure you use the model/fields/relationships that are specified in the bits you want to use.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-servicenow-platform/page/product/csdm-implementation/concept/ci-relationships.html

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-servicenow-platform/page/product/csdm-implementation/reference/use-cases.html

[Tony Collins]

Thanks for the reply.

I agree that the 'Application Service -depends on-> Application -runs on-> Server CI' is one of the documented approaches.

My concern goes to the part of your response '...it depends on....'  For CSDM to be valuable, we need to store information in one place (table/relationship) and the OOB apps need to leverage it.