Difference between an application service and an application within the common service data model?

[Batman3]

I'm trying to understand what sort of data should reside in each CI class, any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[David104]

The easiest way to get a feel for what an 'Application' CI (cmdb_ci_appl) is, find it in the CI Class Manager and take a look at all the child classes. You will see some fairly generic classes such as Database and Application Server. Within Database, you will see things like MySQL, MongoDB, MS SQL Database etc. In Application Server you might find JBoss, Tomcat, Websphere etc. Under 'Infrastructure Service' you can see things like AD Domain, Web Server, Microsoft IIS web server etc.

From an ITSM point of view, it is likely that you could be using any of the CI's, depending on what is most relevant for the specific task. For example, if you are using event management and receiving events from something like SCOM or Solarwinds (etc) you would most likely be matching those events to a Server (cmdb_ci_server) or Application (cmdb_ci_appl) CI. If you have monitoring tools which monitor application availability, then perhaps the event would be matched to the Application Service.

If you are raising a change, release or request record, it might be also be at the Server or Application level, however in some cases it might make more sense to use a higher level CI such as the Application Service (cmdb_ci_service_discovered), or even other Services, Business Applications etc.

Keep in mind that when you are running discovery tools you will inevitably have a lot of different CI types discovered that may not be specifically managed and/or owned by any individual/team. When assigning CI's to any task, I'd recommend only using CI's that are managed so that you can be sure that you know who looks after them, who will fix them, who will approve them etc.

Hope this is helpful?

Cheers,

David