CI creation by Discovery vs CI creation by HAM

[Ed Laar1]

Hi community.

Can somebody advise on the following use case: We are using HAM and also CI Discovery, in this case SCCM-SG.

Normally Assets are created in the procurement process. As soon as these assets are created also corresponding CI records are created. When an Asset (in fact a CI) gets alive in the network SCCM-SG collects info on this CI and updates the CI record accordingly. Due to the Asset<>CI sync also the Asset record is updated when applicable. So far so good.

When on whatever the reason a CI gets alive on the network that not passed the procurement process SCCM-SG inserts this CI in the CMDB and an Asset is created accordingly. Some time later, the HAM process for this Asset is completed but as there are no checks if Asset records already exist or an existing Asset record can not be found additional records are created resulting in duplicate Asset and duplicate CI records. Depending on the timeframe of corrections, these ones are very hard to do especially when records are already used in tickets etc.

Does anyone has suggestion on how to prevent form this scenario? Has anyone build a mechanism preventing duplicate Asset creations so duplicate CI creations? Yes, we can configure SCCM-SG in a way that only CI-updates are allowed but in that case we miss info on existing CI's in the network that are not registered in the CMDB.

Looking forward to any feedback,

Thanks in advance,

Ed

[Scott Halverso1]

I'd deep dive into the Hardware Asset Management process and see what is going wrong that assets are found "on the wire" before the asset management proesses (e.g. procure, advance shipment notification, receive, build, deploy) ever put a record in the asset repository.

We like to make sure any automated process that is inserting into the asset repository is smart enough to not blindly assume it's going to be an insert. 

Are these duplicate records by chance Virtual Machines? 

[Ed Laar1]

Hi Scott,

In this case these Assets are Laptops, discovered by SCCM and inserted as CI's also by SCCM. The creation of these CI's resulted also in creation of Asset records.

Indeed you are right: This should be prevented as the HAM process should be followed before any Asset/ CI appears on the network but ........ that's not always the case.

Ed 

[suvro]

Hi Ed,

Below community thread may have some answers you are looking for

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=21cd9899db2c84d414d6fb24399619a8

[suvro]

I Guess a Before Insert Business Rule on asset table to check whether the required asset is already present then abort creation of an ASSET can help. As discovery manages duplicate CI. This can be useful to handle duplicate ASSET creation