Need help mapping F5 XC / Distributed Cloud services in ServiceNow Service Mapping

[MorZ]

Hi all,

We need assistance with mapping applications that are routed through F5 XC / F5 Distributed Cloud in ServiceNow Service Mapping.

Current situation:

• The application is accessed through an external URL.
• Traffic is routed through F5 XC HTTP Load Balancer.
• Backend targets are configured in Origin Pools.
• The customer cannot provide direct MID Server access to the backend/internal addresses.
• We tried building a custom Pattern using F5 XC API, but were not able to complete the mapping successfully.

Our goal is to map the service chain:

External URL → F5 XC HTTP Load Balancer → Origin Pool → Backend Servers

We attempted to retrieve the data through F5 XC API, including HTTP Load Balancers and Origin Pools, but we are unsure how to properly translate that API data into Service Mapping relationships / CMDB relationships.

Questions:

• Has anyone implemented Service Mapping for F5 XC / Distributed Cloud?
• Is F5 XC supported in any standard ServiceNow Discovery or Service Mapping capability?
• If not, what is the recommended approach?
  • Custom Pattern?
  • REST integration to populate CMDB?
  • Custom CI classes / relationships?
  • Manual service modeling?
• How should we handle the mapping when the MID Server cannot directly reach the backend servers?

Any real-world experience or implementation guidance would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance.

[pr8172510]

Hi @MorZ,

F5 Distributed Cloud (XC) is not supported by an out-of-box Discovery Pattern or Service Mapping pattern.

• Service Mapping requires MID Server visibility and connectivity to discover application dependencies automatically.
• If the MID Server cannot reach the backend servers, Service Mapping cannot perform standard top-down discovery of those dependencies.
• In this scenario, the recommended approach is to use the F5 XC APIs to import topology information and populate CMDB relationships through a custom integration.
• Typical relationship
  • External URL → F5 XC HTTP Load Balancer
  • F5 XC HTTP Load Balancer → Origin Pool
  • Origin Pool → Backend Server

If backend infrastructure is not discoverable from the MID Server, a combination of custom REST integration, CMDB relationship creation, and manual service modeling is generally the recommended approach rather than Service Mapping alone.

Service Mapping dependency discovery relies on MID Server access to the target infrastructure, so limited network visibility will also limit automatic service mapping capabilities.

[peter_ganika · Accepted solution]

Hi ,

The primary goal is to integrate F5 Distributed Cloud (XC) with ServiceNow so that it can automatically discover and maintain the relationship between:
Application URL
      ↓
F5 Load Balancer
      ↓
Load Balancer Pool
      ↓
Backend Servers
      ↓
Application Infrastructure

This will significantly improve Service Mapping accuracy, CMDB visibility, dependency mapping, impact analysis, and operational troubleshooting.

Unlike traditional on-premises F5 appliances that can be discovered through SNMP, SSH, or standard ServiceNow Discovery patterns, the F5 Distributed Cloud environment is SaaS-based and exposes its configuration through REST APIs.
As a result, ServiceNow Discovery cannot automatically identify:
Load Balancers
Load Balancer Pools
Backend Origin Servers
VIPs
F5-to-Server relationships
without a custom integration.

>> Configured ServiceNow REST Messages using the F5 API token authentication mechanism and validate connectivity to the F5 XC tenant.

REST methods - for (Namespace)  
GetLBInventory
GetLBDetail
GetOriginPoolInventory
GetOriginPoolDetail

Create a custom Script Include (F5XCCrawler) that:

Retrieves all Load Balancers.
Retrieves detailed Load Balancer configurations.
Retrieves Origin Pool configurations.
Retrieves backend server information.
Created custom staging table:
u_f5_xc_inventory

The table fields:
Load Balancer Name
Load Balancer UID
Domain Name
VIP
Pool Name
Pool Port
Backend Server IP
Namespace
Tenant
CMDB Server Reference
Discovery Timestamp
correlating backend server IPs to existing CMDB CIs.

enhancing the correlation engine to leverage:

cmdb_ci_win_server
cmdb_ci_linux_server
cmdb_ci_ip_address
cmdb_rel_ci

After data population you can build relationships such as:
Load Balancer
     ↓
Load Balancer Pool
     ↓
    Server

Create a Schedule job script to populate the staging data into cmdb_ci_lb & cmdb_ci_lb_pool tables.

The F5 XC data is now being populated into the out-of-the-box CMDB classes.
Test Service Mapping using both the public application URL and the backend server entry point.

The backend IIS discovery works and identifies the local IIS components on the server. However, standard Service Mapping does not automatically traverse the custom F5 Load Balancer to Pool to Server relationship path in the Service Map view. The topology is correctly available in CMDB and visible in the radial relationship graph, but Service Mapping requires an additional custom pattern or traversal extension to automatically include the F5 layer in the generated service map.

Note: This integration is to get only the F5 data, the infra servers should be discovered by ServiceNow discovery.