CMDB: Data centers, racks and rack units

sathish_anoor · ‎02-08-2016

Hello,

We are implementing our CMDB module in Service Now (without Discovery) and we are looking for some ideas , best practices surrounding the implementation of data center racks, rack units and the like.

I would like users to share their opinion and preferably their experience with implementing:

Rack Reservation - Often times rack space is reserved for projects a few months in advance and paid for, before an actual server (CI) is installed from a rack. There are couple of racks, where 1U servers are placed at alternate RUs for ease of accessibility and the alternates RUs are reserved and paid for. One approach is to create a stand alone table (rack detail) and store the reservations and CI for actual placements. The other is to create dummy CIs (though we don't want hundreds of dummy CIs pulling up in our BSM).

Zero RUs - Has anyone implemented how to track zero RUs and placement of CIs in Zero RUs? One method is to count the zero RUs with the regular RUs ( 45 + 6 ) and present it like a 51

RU rack. Howerver, our facilities would like to see the 6 marked and displayed as 45 RU and 6 Zero RU rack.

KVM, PDU, Fiber Patch - Any special considerations or are these treated like regular CIs?

Rack Visualization - Has anyone been able to display a requested rack in an list view, which includes the empty RUs and RUs with CI? If a 4 RU server in placed in RU 4-8, the the visual should display the server and the remaining empty RU in a 42 RU rack. This is the least priority request, but a nice to have.

Appreciate any experiences you can share.

Sathish

jonathan_luste · ‎02-09-2016

I looked at the 3D cabinets. It is a nice per-cabinet view, but it lacks the capability to look at rows of racks (IE zones, suites, floors, etc.) as well as it isn't interactive in the sense that you can click on a CI to go into its record. Tier44 offers all this, and the price was rather affordable. Not that I'm trying to sell their stuff, just my observation so far.

What are your 0 RU devices? Virtual?

I'd say the rack detail data should be part of the CMDB, for visualization reasons. It would be nice to visualize the reservation I assume. Also, not sure how rollup relationships work outside of CI tables. You could reserve fixed RU per rack or ever specific spaces per rack/cabinet. It would be a type of "dummy" CI, just not on the server, or router, etc. tables.

To be clear, we haven't implemented this ourselves yet. I've got folks populating the data center, zone, computer floor, and rack tables currently first, before we introduce the relationships to the CIs. Currently our hardware doesn't have elevation info populated.

One of the things we are also struggling with is how to report front vs. back of a rack/cabinet as they might be different.

View solution in original post

David Casper · ‎08-17-2018

Did it involve any graphics? Trying to get an idea of the LOE that would entail.

sathish_anoor · ‎08-31-2018

No graphics, just a plain HTML page of a given Rack with all Rack Units listed. If the RU had a CI it will list the CI (hyperlink). Else it will be blank.

JonathanJacob · ‎09-05-2019

Sathish - do you have the 3D Cabinet update set - it no longer appears on share.

sathish_anoor · ‎01-21-2021

Sorry, I searched for this and could not find it (and forgot to update). I will be happy to go over on how we built if if you are interested.

jonathandrury · ‎09-29-2021

Any details/examples you could provide would be useful!

Thanks!