Should Application Service linked to Server table or Virtual machine instance table?

[kiran-ravin]

Hi, 

We are in process of drafting our data model for CMDB/CSDM and I have a main question. Should we map the relationship between Application Service/Service Instance to Servers(cmdb_ci_win_server/ cmdb_ci_linux_server etc) or to virtual machine instance table(cmdb_ci_vm_instance)?  

It brings confusion on which table is important in CMDB/CSDM and which should be connected to the services. 

Your suggestions are much appreciated. 

[Doroth_e]

The service instance or app service is the logical stack.
If you look at the relationships of the stack, the windows/linux server that hosts the application is critical for the service map, incidents, changes, etc. The VM instance is often related to Cloud environments.

In a service instance, the relationship derived to the server CI is Depends On, and one degree further, the VM instance is Virtualised By the windows/linux server.

Are you trying to map manually the service instance? if yes, start with the entry point to the system then consider the main CIs as server/application/middleware and database. Sometimes a load balancer in front. 🙂

Within CI Class Manager, you can make use of the Suggested Relationships and All Relationship Rules to work out for each CI class the correct relationship to use.

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @kiran-ravin 

Try to model an App Service/Service Instance as close to reality as you can. What actually happens in a service? Nowadays we mostly log into a web portal which is being provided by a web server app running on some kind of (usually Linux) web server. There may be other apps/microservices providing content there as well so it's not just a single CI, but if building with hierarchical relationships the entry point should be an application.

Think apps before getting into the ins and outs of on premise/virtual infra. If you're not using Service Mapping, or you're discovering in the cloud then you can build relationships manually (which is very slow and difficult), group CIs together using a Dynamic CI Group for on premise or use Tag-Based Service Mapping for cloud, but many organisations forget about the application CIs and suddenly you have a service with no apps 🙂

I hope this helps!

Mat

[Vijay Venkatara]

Hi  @kiran-ravin  - Did you find what you were looking for from the comments already ( which I think are great) or are you looking for more specific as I do understand the replies maybe quite generic.

Do you use discovery to auto-discover applications and servers? Or is it a manual process on your side? That will also help in answering your questions.