What is the best practice for using the Environment classes and the Environment attribute on Hardware CIs

[jimzeigler]

I'm looking for guidance on the intended use for the Environment classes and how they relate to the Environment (used_for) attribute on the Hardware class. We are currently using the Environment attribute (string field  implemented as a dropdown of choices) to hold a list of environment names that a Hardware CI may support, but we would prefer a more elegeant solution that lets you select  from a  list of environments (is this what the Environment(cmdb_ci_environment) table is for?). I see that the cmdb_environment_to_ci table (also  labeled as  "Environment" for some strange reason) can be used to relate any CI to an environment. Is  it the intension of the platform to eventually upgrade the used_for attribute on Hardware CIs to contain  the current  list of  environments that the CI is related to (based on the cmdb_environment_to_ci table)?

On a related topic, Will the Event Dashboard eventually be able to filter the CIs it displays based on  an environment filter, or  will we always need to create an  Event Dashboard view for each environment to keep the Environment specific dependency trees isolated from each other?

[Aditya Telideva]

Hi Jim,

I am very much interested to hear more about this ....before that could you please go through the below link and let me know if this helps you:

ITOM Event Management - Adding your own Prioritization Filters to the Event Dashboard

[SudhirOjha]

hi, 

did you get the answer to your question.

[jimzeigler]

Question 1:Still looking for guidance on use of the environment tables and how they are intended to be used to associate CIs with the environments they support. Is the "Used for"attribute being phased out in favor of the new Environment tables?

Question2: Prioritization filters do not address the need to isolate the Event Dashboards for each environment (Prod,QA,Dev). If CIs (including Entry points) were identified with environments, a new Environment filter could be used to select the environment you want the dashboard to display. Otherwise, we need to create duplicates of the Business Services to create a dashboard Service Hierarchy for each environment.