CI Class mapping

[jamesmcwhinney]

I have been asked to help our service desk team automatically categorize computer assets into different types:

• Desktop
• Laptop
• Tablet
• iPad
• Other

My thought was that I need to create new CI Classes that extend hardware->Computer->Personal Computer, and then associated "Model Categories".

My question is: Is this the right approach? and if so, how do I get discovery to start mapping the laptops etc over to the correct CI Classes, and the new "Model Categories"?

Thanks!

- James

[DaveHertel]

Hi James --

  I wouldn't recommend creating new classes for this use case.  There is already a pretty good hierarchy built out in the CMDB.  In my opinion, the examples you provided are simply different types of personal computer.  Of course you COULD create sub-classes, BUT Discovery (since you mentioned it) will not automatically leverage the subclasses you create. Disco can - with work - do this, but why bother? Instead, consider leveraging the power of the existing platform.   

These ~4 types are basically all personal computing devices.  1 approach, is they could all go into cmdb_ci_pc_hardware, and the FORM FACTOR can differentiate.  Or other fields, if you don't like those.   TIP: Run discovery against each of these device types and see where Disco classified them automatically.   Using built-in disco capabilities will save you a lot of work and provides good migration path for future updates too.  Whereas... rolling your own stuff means you own maintaining the details...

The make/model stuff for Models will likely get handled by Disco too, but of course test it...  but a few sample tests will give you some insight into what the platform will naturally do w/o a bunch of manual work.

Does this help?  Hope so!

Schema map snippet 

[jamesmcwhinney]

Thanks Dave!  That makes sense.  How would I go about automatically setting the form factor attribute as the CIs are discovered?

[DaveHertel]

Hi - one approach would be to have business rules and/or the probe/sensor combination.   The probe is getting XYZ data from the target that is scanned.  You would mostly-likely need to build custom logic to look for a specific value and then set the form-factor field accordingly.

Again as a test, I'd run disco against all these device types and evaluate what data is provided OOB by disco probe/sensor/patterns.  Perhaps some of the needed info is already being retrieved, and you just need to build some logic in either a sensor or pattern to use that data and update the CI form factor accordingly.

A quick disco test of each of these types will info your next steps...  which will likely involve some custom development.

Side note-- Discovery is often used for infrastructure stuff, and somewhat less so for client machines.  Its do-able, but less common.   Another thought, do you have another tool/source that already has this info and you could push it into CMDB via an integration?   Food for thought...

Is this helpful?