How to restrict discovery from updating certain CI attributes?

[anandtk]

Out of the box discovery will update certain CI attributes, however what if I don't want discovery to update certain CI fields because I would prefer to update them manually all the time.

One thing that strikes my mind would be to disable from the probes, the query it runs to collect the description field. Is there a better way of doing it?

If you probably have a solution, is that a best practice?

Please share some of your ideas.

[chris_tessier]

You can achieve this with CI reconciliation rules, i would suggest looking at the docs site to understand how it works, check out this link:

Reconciliation rules

[anandtk]

Chris,

It is exactly what I was looking for.

"Create or edit a CI reconciliation rule" will solve the purpose. I will be trying that soon this week on my dev environment.

Thank you so much. Appreciate your help.

[anandtk]

Chris,

I tried to do the same, but it dint work.

I have created a reconciliation rule that has the source as 'service now' (Assuming that would cover Discovery). In attributes list, I have selected all but 'description'.

I created the reconciliation rule.

I took a CI sample

I tied to manually add an additional line to the existing description.

I ran discovery to this CI

Result: The discovery scan removed the additional line (Which mean the 'description. filed is updated).

Any thoughts on this please?

[chris_tessier]

I think a simpler way to do this is just create a rule at cmdb_ci_computer level, and allow Manual entry to update the description See example screenshot.