Using Dynamic CI Group as a Business Application's Application Service

[Johannes]

We are looking at utilizing Dynamic CI Groups for some of our Business Application's downstream Application Services.

Reason for doing this is the flexibility it provides by using CMDB Queries to add infrastructure CIs that can neither be tagged, nor mapped by top-down discovery, (and we do not want to map them manually).

I have not seen any examples from ServiceNow doing this, and it is not mentioned as an "option" in the CSDM Whitepaper, but it is possible to do with the CSDM Application Service wizard, and I can not think of anything on the BA/EAW/APM level that would not work as expected.

Only thing I can think of is that relations is not being created (in cmdb_rel_ci) and Service Maps would not show downstream CIs, but that is acceptable for us.

Anybody else doing this? Any reason not to do it?

@John Spirko @Mark Bodman @CMDB Whisperer ?

[Louis R Ronzitt]

There's no reason not to do it.  With thousands of these Dynamic CI Groups set up and in use today, they work as expected.  As you indicated, it's key to ensure you have a corresponding CMDB Group created for each one.  Then create the CMDB Query (CMDB Group Contains Saved Queries) as part of that group.  As long as you have the conditions you need in your queries, (e.g., windows server class, used for production, with life cycle stage = operational) it works fine.  If you also use Service Mapping it could be redundant so you would have to tease those out accordingly.

[Johannes]

Thanks Louis!

So you relate thousands of your DCIGs directly upstream to you Business Application Records, and all functionality in APM/EAW and similar applications are still working as expected?

[Louis R Ronzitt]

Yes, correct.  Ensure you use the 'Consumes::Consumed by' relationship, as John showed today.   Of course you want the CI on your incidents, problems, changes, tasks, etc., to pull in either the infrastructure item (e.g., computer, server) or the service instance (aka., Application Service or DCIG).   This way the data is properly surfaced to DPM, EA/APM etc.,