Combine multiple Configuration Items under 1 Configuration Item

[Chris Gitonga]

As we are discovery items, we have many different firewalls and our people would like the option to select just 1 configuration item called Firewall which would have all the firewall CI’s underneath. This way they don’t have to determine exactly which firewall they need to select. I was wondering would creating a CMDB group called Firewalls and then putting all the firewall CI’s underneath that group, would that be the best approach? Or it there another way to do that? Or can that even be done?

Any guidance would be truly appreciated.

[ryan_pope]

I would recommend reviewing ServiceNow's white paper on CSDM (common services data model). This may help with what you're looking for. 

At a high level, the recommendation would be to review a service-oriented modelling of your CMDB. Firewalls are used to provide a service or services (either technical or business), so my recommendation would be to analyze what services those firewalls offer the organization, create those services, and relate the firewalls to those services through the CMDB Relationship builder.

This way, you can make use of the Service field that should existing on a variety of task based tables now, to help limit selection of CI based on the service impacted.

[Hitoshi Ozawa]

Hi Chris,

OOTB, there's already a "IP Firewall" under "Network Gear". Can't that be used? Items in child CIs will be included in a parent list. So, Cisco Firewall Device will be included in IP Firewall list.

[Chris Gitonga · Accepted solution]

Thanks Hitoshi. I thought that would have worked as well but the issue is the actual firewalls were discovered as Virtual Machines. My workaround was to create dynamic Ci's and reference the cmdb group in the encoded query.