Why does serial number on CI and Asset records gets deleted when CI is set to "Retired"?
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06-01-2023 02:41 PM - edited 06-02-2023 10:44 AM
Hello experts!
We want to know why does serial number on CI and Asset records gets deleted when CI is set to "Retired"?
What is the process of retiring CI?
Your time is appreciated!
Thank you!
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06-03-2023 03:23 AM
Hello,
You can go through the below article to understand the complete process in depth
Please mark my answer as correct based on Impact.
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06-05-2023 01:04 AM
If Serial Number is getting cleared on CI & Asset records when CI is 'Retired' as you mentioned, it does not look like an OOB behavior. Also it is definitely not aligned with best practices as it is leading to data loss and that too for a critical attribute like serial number. You need to check whether any customized business rules or scripts that are active on any of the Asset or CMDB tables might be causing this.
Following are some key considerations related to CI retirement:
1) Asset management: If it is a CI which has an asset associated with it, ideally the state changes should be driven from the asset record. When the asset state is set to retired, the CI status fields will change to retired.
The following URL gives detailed explanation about asset & CI management:
2) Change management: CI data updates should be included as part of the change management process by using the proposed changes feature explained below:
In the context of CI retirement, the CI status fields should be marked as 'Retired' after the completion of any change request which involves decommissioning of the CIs involved.
3) Retiring stale CIs: CIs which are not updated for a long time will be considered as stale CIs. Staleness rules can be configured for CI classes as given below:
For CI classes that are expected to be automatically updated frequently from discovery or 3rd party integrations, the 'Effective Duration' for staleness can be defined by considering the frequency of discovery schedules, integration scheduled jobs etc. which are updating the records in that CI class. For example, if a CI class is updated weekly by discovery, the effective duration for staleness can be set as something like 14 days. For another class, that is expected to updated only fortnightly, it will make sense to set the effective duration as something higher like 30 days.
CMDB health dashboard will show details of stale CIs. CI class owners should review the list of stale CIs periodically and the CIs which are identified to be no longer in use should be marked as 'Retired'
4) Archiving and deletion: All the CIs that are marked as 'Retired' might be eventually handled in one of the following ways:
i) Archived after a specified time period from the retirement date & later deleted after a specified time period from the archival date OR
ii) Directly deleted after a specified time period from the retirement date
The method and time period will be based on the organization's data archival and deletion policies
5) CMDB data manager: This is the best practice method in ServiceNow for managing CI retirement, archival and deletion. It is explained in the following URL:
This should be leveraged if your instance meets the pre-requisites mentioned under 'Configure the environment for CMDB Data Manager' section mentioned in the above URL
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06-06-2023 07:50 AM
Thank you very much Ashok for detailed information. Appreciate it!
I have a question though. Is there a way to just retire a CI and not the Asset?
i.e. We can have server which is used only for a year and is not being disposed but CI is retired. So we want to keep the asset but not CI associated to it. Assets ca be repurposed. It can go back to In Stock.
On the other hand, when asset is set to retire, CI should be retired.
How can we achieve this?
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06-23-2023 04:57 AM
Hello @Flybook ,
For this scenario, I think you can use the Archive rule to archive the CIs but not the Assets. The Archived CIs will be stored in a separate table called "Archived 'class name of the CI' ". But this won't affect the Asset record, Asset record will be there.
