Should Application (cmdb_ci_appl) CI's be part of a Dynamic CI group?

[Ravish Shetty]

Hi all,

We are starting our CSDM journey and defining Technology Management Services and Business Services.

As part of CSDM relationship definitions, we are creating Application (cmdb_ci_appl) entries since we don't have ServiceNow Discovery enabled yet, and we are also encompassing them as part of Dynamic CI group and linking those Dynamic CI groups with Technical Service offering and Technology Management Service but we found that the use of Dynamic CI groups is only suggested for Infrastructure CI's as per the CSDM relationships diagram we see below.

Please advise if we should use Dynamic CI groups with Application (cmdb_ci_appl) or not. If we are not supposed to use it with Application, how would we link the Technical Service Offerings with the Application (cmdb_ci_appl) records?

Thanks,

Ravish

[glenn_pinto]

Only comment on "As I interpret the later CSDM models, A Technical Service Offering can reference a Dynamic CI Group, but this is not used by ITOM because offerings are not operational CIs that need to be monitored."

Offerings can be used to easily manage group data of CIs in the dynamic CI group. Support group, Change group, and Managed by Group can be configured at the offering level and then these groups are synced to the underlying CIs. 

This group data associated with the offering or underlying CI allows for auto population of the assignment group field on an incident, change, or problem record if the offering or CI is chosen as the affected CI. 

Support group maps to the Incident Assignment group field
Change group maps to the change request Assignment group field

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @Ravish Shetty,

The advice above is sound, however there is one reasonable use case for including an Application in a Dynamic CI Group - it is where you have no means of automatically populating CI relationships in the CMDB (e.g. Discovery) and must therefore associate the CIs in an application service/service instance manually.

This typically only applies very early on in an organisation's CMDB maturity - for example when they begin by importing a static list of CIs. Once Discovery (or a similar method) is in place and you have moved onto to application service/service instance population it should no longer be considered or needed.

I hope this helps!

Mat

[Barry Kant]

Hi @Ravish Shetty 

as most stated Dynamic CI Groups have a dual function:
1 - acting as Application Service / Service Instance (service_classification = "applications service")
2 - to group CIs in the relation to Technical Service Offerings (service_classificaiton = "technical service")

As in the 2nd option the prescriptive model indeed shows it in Technical Service Offering relations to Application Services/Service Instances. But if you think about what the key functions is: group dynamically CIs together to a Technical Service Offering and sync back some group data to the related CIs. If you look at it that way you might have situations that it might be valuable to group Application Services/Service Instances via dynamic CI groups to the Technical Service Offering. Simply as you can benefit from it. 

I used it once where we had 50+ SAP instances that where managed in the same way. 
What if you sell solution instances?
So, it depends I would say. If you can benefit from it then why not?
I would not take it as a very strict, but look what you want to achieve and it adds value.

BR,
Barry