White Paper: ServiceNow ZBoot Without Discovery

[Varun Vijaykuma]

ZBoot is ServiceNow’s solution for restoring an instance to a clean, optimized state to eradicate technical debt and maximize the platform. It plays a vital role in major upgrades, infrastructure refreshes, and long-term performance optimization. A key challenge during ZBoot is rebuilding the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which often relies on ServiceNow Discovery for accuracy and completeness.

However, organizations without access to ServiceNow Discovery due to licensing limitations, timing, or architectural decisions must rely on third-party tools such as SolarWinds to repopulate the CMDB. While SolarWinds provides robust network and infrastructure monitoring capabilities, it lacks the native integration, classification logic, and relationship mapping features of ServiceNow Discovery.

This white paper outlines a strategic framework for rebuilding the CMDB post-ZBoot using SolarWinds as a temporary data source, identifies the limitations of this approach, and provides a roadmap for gradually transitioning to ServiceNow Discovery to establish sustainable and compliant CMDB.