Hi All, Quick question around Discovery Licensing vs Integrations to populate CMDB data

[vidhukeshvimal]

 If i am doing integrations with Vcenter to fetch all CI information related to VMs into Servicenow CMDB and not using Discovery Module will i be charged for the licenses.

My understanding is that if Discovery is helping me fetch data or update only then i get charged for the license . So im looking for an answer will i be charged if its just fetching data from Vcenter DB and pushing it to Servicenow ?

Another query if i update the CI details manually as well let suppose it was neither discovered via Discovery or populated via any integrations will i still get licensed for the updates that i do on the CMDB for those CI

[James Hammond]

Hello, It would be helpful to know which Discovery license you are using before answering. Typically licensing is done by 'nodes'; a node is a record on the cmdb_ci_server table in ServiceNow that has the following values: - the discovery source is set to ' ServiceNow' - the first discovered and most recent discovery fields have different values. Since importing and managing records using VMware won't set the Discovery Source to ServiceNow, you won't consume any Node licenses; but without knowing what your license plan is I can't advise further. I hope that helps.

[vidhukeshvimal]

Hi James,

Thank you for you response it does answer my question however since you asked here is my response to the discovery license you asked about. 

We procured Node based licenses where i'll be giving specific IP Addresses only to be discovered via the discovery module rest we were planning to pull information either via DB integration or Web Services on Vcenter to pull data out of VCenter and push it to ServiceNow CMDB table (incremental updates) 

Please let me know if this is the right approach and we would not be consuming discovery license with this approach

Regards,

Vidhukesh 

[James Hammond]

Hi Vidhukesh,

So from you have said, I understand you will be scanning specific email addresses; If the IP address scanned generates a record on the cmdb_ci_server table, then a second separate servicenow discovery scan updates that record, it will consume 1 node from your license.

The only way you can prevent a node from being consumed, is for servicenow discovery to only touch that IP address once.

In that situation, you can use any other source you want to update the record.

[vidhukeshvimal]

Thank you James that clears it.

regards,

Vidhukesh Vimal