How do you remove software products not longer being discovered?

[blazye44]

Hello, 

I have a big list of discovered software products that is no longer being discovered and in some case the servers has been retired and removed from the network. How do we remove or retire these products from our CMDB?

Eddie

[anubhavkapoor76]

Best way to handle inactivation of CI's is to use the Status (install_status) field. The default value of "Installed" means that the CI is active. The choice of "Retired" is used as inactive and it will not be discovered in next Discovery Schedule!!

Note: You would need the CI's for audit purposes later-on. So never delete CI's. If it goes too large you can run a archive rule on it.

[blazye44]

I have thousands of Software CI that need to be retired or removed from the CMDB so they don't count against our entitlements. 

[Daniel Slocum · Accepted solution]

Hi Eddie,

Starting in the ServiceNow London Release, the Reconciliation Engine does not count Software Installation records related to CI's in a state of Retired.  For releases prior to London it is recommended you create a Business Rule to remove Software Installation records upon install_status change to Retired.  You may also want to create a Business Rule to remove Device Allocations under the same circumstances.

Regards,

Daniel W. Slocum

[mikewhalley]

Great piece of intelligence, Daniel !