Should monitors be set up as Assets and CIs?

[bdodds01]

Should monitors be set up as Assets and CIs?  Monitor is a model category that has no associated CI class.  It is also listed as a "type" of Peripheral (cmdb_ci_peripheral). Peripherals do have an associated CI class.  Currently, we only track monitors as Assets (not CIs), but we have run into a couple of scenarios where it would be nice to have monitors listed as CIs (being able to check out loaner monitors is one example). Do most businesses treat monitors as assets only or assets and CIs, and why?

[Mark Laucus]

Personally I think tracking a monitor as a Configuration Item creates more work then value.  Putting my ITIL hat on, if you are going to track the monitor as a configuration item it should have change control processes when added and removed from the CMDB.  The more items you add to the CMDB the additional management required.  Also consider a discovery tool is not going to identify specific monitors so you cannot automate this and will require manual processes (probably using already).  Our business does not treat monitors as configuration items.

Hope this helps.

[Brent Sutton]

We do track monitors, as configuration items, at my organisation but I personally think it is more effort than it is worth.

Monitors don't come through in discovery, so we use a PowerShell script to bring the monitors attached to Windows computers into SCCM and then into our CMDB. Experience tells me that not all monitors report the vendor information correctly (Apple's monitors quite often come through as LG - assume LG is the OEM) and expect any serial numbers you extract to only partially match the serial on the physical monitor.

I personally think that monitors should be treated as peripherals if recorded at all.

Hope this helps,

Brent

P.S. If my suggestion helped then please mark as helpful and/or correct so other community members can benefit from this information.

[Peter Williams]

Hi @Brent Sutton how are you transforming the Monitor information in your Assets from SCCM?

[Brent Sutton]

Hi @Peter Williams, I believe I added an additional data source and transform map to the OOTB SCCM v1 plugin at the time. ServiceNow has well moved on since this thread was first posted so you will probably need to look at the inTune plugin or Service Graph Connector for Microsoft SCCM.
I haven't looked at this for quite some time so if any other community members can help then please jump in.
Brent