Virtual servers in CMDB

[soc_assetmanage]

All,

We would like to get some feedback on best-practice and tried methods on several CMDB-related questions.

Second one: What would be (conceptually and in practice) the best way to add Virtual servers to the ServiceNow CMDB. Virtual Instance does not seem to be the appropriate Ci Class, as it does not contains   all required Server-attributes to succesfully manage servers.

• Should Ci Class "Servers" contain both physical as virtual servers?
• How does Virtual Instances come into play? Are the virtual instances = virtual servers, or are they an additional VMWare layer in between and should Servers with flag Virtual = True be linked to the Virtual Instance they run on? And that, in turn, linked to the ESX server (or ESX cluster).

• We would go for the above, were it not for underlying Assets. For every server Ci, an underlying Asset is created. And this would make no sense for Virtual servers.
• The other way around, it would make no sense that Ci owners would only see the physical servers and none of the virtual ones, when browsing the Windows Servers section.
• Finally: what is the best practice method for dealing with physical to virtual migrations of servers. If we would just change the virtual-flag from a server from False to True, this would be very misleading. Should we create a new Server Ci or Virtual Instance and adapt the old one. It might get a new purpose / hostname etc.

Thank you for sharing your ServiceNow experience,

Regards,

Kenny

[mduluk]

For the physical to virtual, you could do a few things.   The easiest would be to make a new virtual server CI and then retire the physical asset/ci and maybe rename the physical CI so there are not two with the same name something like SERVER123-physical.     The other thing you could do is modify the physical CI to be virtual and change the model.   The problem with that is the asset piece.   I think it is a little harder to disassociate the asset from the ci.   But if you break the link you can then retire or purpose the physical asset.

[ssears]

We created a VMWare table extended from CMDB CI that contains all of our ESX machines. Then created another table for Farms (Clusters) and then both Physical and Virtual Servers are in the Server table.

The relationship is like this:

VMWare -Hosts::Hosted on- Farm (Cluster) > Farm -Hosts::Hosted on- Server

We import all of our data from spreadsheets or manual entries since we do not have Discovery, which is why we created our own tables. One day we will use Discovery and this will change again...

[soc_assetmanage]

Thanks for all replies. We will take it into account.

This leaves me wondering about one thing:

If virtual servers are always added under Servers... what is the Virtual Machine Instance ci Class used for?

[Chris Hagy]

We're debating similar things.

In my mind, VM Instances may not be named as the Server, so VMInstance PROD_TMPLT_SR_001 might be WebServer CI called DCAPWEB01 which "is virtual".

I'm not 100% sure if its WORTH the layer split but that's where I would use it if you thought there was value.

If you name the instance the same as the server that is setup within it then its probably not worth it because it could make things confusing to someone trying to associate to an CI Field.

[chrisdimo]

the same issue exists with solaris conatainers ( virtuals ).   I raised this earlier in the year with Service Now. See response below. sort of makes sense....

2014-02-04 13:49:28 PST - Antony Alldis (NOW)

Additional comments

Solution proposed by Antony Alldis (NOW) Hi Chris, Many thanks indeed for your time on the webex with Chris Nguyen and Aleck Lin from our Development Team. It was a pleasure to speak to you. As discussed; Aleck has confirmed that the BSM Map is displaying the view of the Solaris Zones as designed. The Solaris Container: aumelbd01 is displayed as a Solaris Server and then as a Virtual Machine (which is the actual "real" state for this server) - the Container appears to Discovery as a "real" physical server when it is discovered, and this is why there is 2 x entries for the machine - 1 x "physical" and 1 x "virtual". We also discussed the possibility of enhancing the product to use Solaris Logical Domains and have recommended raising an Enhancement Request via HI Self-Service. Again I would like to apologise for the length of time that it has taken us to get to the correct place with this issue, and hope that you are comfortable with the answers that have been supplied during the webex session. As agreed, I will place this incident into a Solution Proposed state, to allow you to discuss this with your UNIX Administrators, so that they are happy with the explanation. If there are any issues or concerns; please do not hesitate to Reject Solution on this incident, and we will attempt to answer any further questions that may arise - otherwise, please Accept Solution to close this incident. Once an incident is closed it is not possible to re-open it, however it is possible to raise a Repeat Incident, that can be used to field any further concerns/questions. Best regards, Tony Alldis, ServiceNow Technical Support (T) [International Toll-Free] - 00800-400-50900 (T) [North America Toll-Free] - +1-866-709-5932