CMDB groups and changes

[Eric M]

In the Istanbul and jakatra release came the concept of CMDB groups. anyone using them with change ? and how are you using them?

Best,

Eric

[camran]

Are you using the layer approach? Create a technical layer ( e.g. Network Service, System service) and relate CIs, this way you can select that service (CI) on the Change form which will use all relevant CIs.

[Eric M]

yes, that works for defined services etc. The grouping of CI allows for a option to provide a mix of cis for different patching models etc.

[Paul Coste2]

This doesn't seem fully implemented or documented.   CMDB_Group is not actually a CI class, so you cannot just fill a CI field of a change with a CMDB Group.   There is, however, a class called cmdb_ci_group, and this is a CI class.   There is a Community update set to this class which does what is being asked here.   It adds a list of group members, so that when you add the group CI to a Change, it will add the members as well.   I had heard that is how CMDB group was supposed to work, i.e. adding this capability out of box, but it seems the design is fundamentally different, since cmdb groups are not CIs.

[Michael Fry1]

We're using them for Patching. Put the Ci's into a group, like Windows Patch Tuesday or Windows weekend, etc. Then we use SNguru codes to pull the CI's from the group into the Affected CI related list on Change: https://www.servicenowguru.com/cmdb/ci-groups/

[Paul Coste2]

We also use the SNGuru scripts just as you mentioned.   What looked promising about the new out-of-box Group was that it also supports the use of encoded queries and CMDB Queries to determine the group lists.   Unfortunately as the "cmdb_group" table is not the same as "cmdb_ci_group" and doesn't extend "cmdb_ci" I can't use this.   Has anyone successfully used the new "cmdb_group" class in Istanbul?   If so, how?