How to prevent asset records being created from virtual machine CIs?

Valqe · ‎05-25-2021

Hi all.

It appears that baseline ServiceNow configuration will create asset records [alm_asset] when new CI is created even if this CI applies to virtual machine. I'd like to better understand what are best practices to avid asset record insertion for CIs whose "Is Virtual" field value is 'true'

My two comments are:

-- I would hate to make changes in baseline business rule "Create Asset on insert"

-- In 'Hardware Category' records there is a way to set 'Asset Tracking Strategy' to 'Don't create assets' but you never know what new model category will be created in the future to prevent new hardware categories from creating new assets for virtual machines.

I would appreciate your thoughts on best practices you followed for way around to this configuration.

Thank you.

Val

Valon Sheremeti · ‎06-04-2021

You usually want to utilize "enforce CI verification" in cases when your company is allowing employees to bring their own devices. If that's the case then when ServiceNow 'Discovery' creates CIs for given devices you want to prevent assets to be created for same - therefore "enforce CI verification"

I did a lot of research on this topic (prevent asset creation for virtual CIs) and at the end I decided the following:

-- I will NOT modify baseline "Create Asset on insert" business rule, since it has long term implications on future instance upgrades.

-- Even if I were to modify Create Asset on insert" BR, it will not work, because there is "Asset - Create asset delayed sync" scheduled job that will still create an asset from CI. And if I were to modify that too it would be to much to modify in the baseline.

So my solution was:

-- Run discovery in your DEV (or subdev) environment. Check what kind of virtual assets are being created and note their "Hardware Model" records. In my case there were two records:

1. "VMware Virtual Platform" and

2. "VMware7,1"

-- Modify those Hardware Model records "Asset tracking strategy" to "Don't create assets"

-- Export those Hardware Records in .XML format and import them on higher instances

-- Run Discovery on higher instances and assets for hardware models that you've imported (and previously modified not to create assets) will not be created.

Unfortunately this approach will not work if you already ran discovery in higher instances because asset records have already been created.

I hope this helps

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Curtis2 · ‎05-25-2021

Add a condition in the script to check to see if the CI has a field called "is virtual" and then if that value is True, exit.

https://<yourInstance>.service-now.com/nav_to.do?uri=sys_script.do?sys_id=0d6b59dc1b0310002502fbcd2c0713a5

Valqe · ‎05-25-2021

Thanks for your reply Curtis. Based on your experience is this best practice to follow? I ask this because I hate to make changes in the baseline business rule. Thanks a lot 🙂

bjmcdonald · ‎05-27-2021

Very interested in this topic - we are discussing if virtual machines are assets. What is the best practice here - I'm thinking of using the "enforce CI verification" Yes.

I want to make sure that if a CI is created - it doesn't create an asset - but if an asset is created and the coalesce field (whereever we're supposed to identify that) matches a CI - then it will connect the 2.

Does this make sense?

Valon1 · ‎05-28-2021

Thanks for your reply.

I don't think we should create Assets for virtual machines. Assets are used to track a record from financial perspective and virtual assets don't have financial value unless we're tracking sw licenses which then falls in software asset management area.

Enforcing CI verification seems like a good idea, but I was wondering if its a good idea to go through all possible CI verifications when we initially implement 'Discovery'? Then how do we maintain future records? It could end up being full time job for someone.

My hope was ServiceNow added system property (something like 'Prevent virtual CI from creating an asset') that we would set to 'True' but that does not seem to be the case.

I wonder how Steven Bell (Community MVP) would answer this question, but I don't know how to tag him on this post. This is his background. Maybe @Lisa Latour can help tag Steven on this post to get his opinion? Thank you 🙂