Class for Applications and Websites - Tracking of Websites in the CMDB

klpawlenty
Mega Contributor

What Class are others using for Applications and Websites?   How are others tracking Websites in the CMDB?

We rolled out using the CMDB with the software_package class.   I believe this is incorrect and we need to fix this before implementing discovery.   What Class are others using for Applications?

We have a need to start tracking certain websites.   What Class are others using to track Websites or how have you decided to track these?

10 REPLIES 10

mechamberlain
Mega Expert

Hi Kari,



For applications, we use the standard "out of the box" CI Class called Application [table: cmsb_ci_appl].


For websites, we use the standard "out of the box" CI class called Web Site [table: cmdb_ci_web_site].



We believe staying standard where possible is the best approach.



Interested to hear what others may be doing.



Marty


Thank you Martin.   I am curious how you were told that the OOB (out of box) CI Class for applications was cmdb_ci_appl?   I don't understand the way ServiceNow is classifying applications and software (cmdb_ci_appl vs. cmdb_ci_spkg).   Are you using Discovery and the cmdb_ci_appl class is the class where your applications are placed?



Thank you for your response.   I am interested to hear what others are doing with these classes.   How have you decided to track Web Sites?   All Web Sites, only a certain criteria (Web sites with a login, etc.)?



Kari


mechamberlain
Mega Expert

Kari,



I learned a lot on my own by:


  1. Reading Configuration Management material in the ServiceNow Wiki.   Here are some examples:
  2. Videos from ServiceNow have also been helpful....lots of good stuff here... NOWsupport - YouTube
  3. Getting a free "development" instance from ServiceNow and really digging into the demo data and using the Schema Map functions to see the relationships between the different "out of the box" CI Classes.
  4. Asking questions and reading a lot of posts on the ServiceNow community (like you are doing).
  5. Attending the basic ServiceNow admin training course helped me a LOT.
  6. Attending the last "Knowledge" conference (Knowledge15) and participating in classes and laboratory sessions was very helpful as well.


I hope this helps.


edward_williams
Tera Contributor

I believe the out of the box CI Type (CI Class for ServiceNow) for Applications is Applications. And the out of the box CI Type (CI Class for ServiceNow) for Websites is actually Application Servers (Web Servers, Tomcat, JBoss, etc.).



It seems ServiceNow has concluded that a Web Server Service that is actually an application running on a physical or virtual server should be called "Application Server". Not sure who came up with that idea but it does not jive, if you will, with industry standards. Anyway, this is how the ServiceNow Configuration module works out of the box. If you run ServiceNow Discovery on a Server (via IP address of course) and Discovery finds IIS (Microsoft's Web Server Service) running on that Server, Discovery will create that application CI under the Application Server CI Class (CI Type), draw the relationship from that Server to IIS for impact or BSM, place that Server in the CMDB under the appropriate Server Class and appropriate all other software products running on that Server accordingly.