Virtual and Physical servers

[JesperGuldfeldt]

Hello everyone,

I was wondering how you have set up your Configuration Items (CIs) for servers in your organization. Specifically, do you separate virtual servers from physical servers? What kind of relations do you have from a virtual server to a physical. Is there any CI's inbetween? 

In my organization, we register all our servers under categories like Windows, Linux, etc., and we use an attribute labeled "Is virtual" to distinguish between virtual and physical servers.

Are there any benefits to using a different approach? What are the pros and cons?

Looking forward to hearing how others have approached this!

[Daniel Borkowi1]

Hi @JesperGuldfeldt , ServiceNow don't distinct virtual and physical servers by classes. They use the flag "Is virtual". And I highly recommend to never distinct this via classes as ServiceNow Discovery can't handle this without adjusting lot's of Discovery Patterns. I already did a project to build back this approach for a customer when they started with Discovery. 

Besides the flag a virtual server typically has a relationship to a Virtual Machine instance where the Server is hosted on (via instantiates relationship) or relationship to ESX Server (virtualized by). Depending on type of virtualisation. 

You can check the CI Class manager for this information under Suggested Relationships you will see how ServiceNow would model the Relationships with discovery:

Greets
Daniel

Please mark reply as Helpful/Correct, if applicable. Thanks!

[palanikumar]

Hi,

Are you using Discovery to populate CMDB or are you populate using other methods?

If you are not using discovery, then I suggest you to leave this way. 

If you are using Discovery, then you need to use Cloud discovery to get VM Ware related information. Infact you need to run both IP Based discovery and Cloud Discovery.

IP Based discovery will scan your network and discover all OS level information. For eg, your Host Name, OS details, IP, Installed software etc.

Cloud discovery will scan you VCenter and captures all information that can be retreived from VCenter. Eg, your Image Name, RAM etc. This will not collect OS level information like installed software.

ServiceNow will create two CIs, on for IP based under Computer Class and one for Cloud based under Virtualization Server class. ServiceNow will relate both CI using Instantiates::Instantiated by relationship

Let me know if you have more details