Why, when discovering a Virtual machine instance, does discovery create a "Computer" record and a "Windows Server" record as well as the "Virtual Machine Instance"?

[lharrison]

When discovering VMware using ServiceNow Discovery, I get several records created for a single device.

Sometimes it can be a Computer, Windows Server and a VMware Virtual Instance or other times it's just the Windows Server and VMware Virtual Instance records.

Excuse my ignorance if there's an easy answer to this.

Thanks, in advance

Larissa

[Daryll Conway]

I've had similar problems with discovering virtual CI's.

As well as what you've mentioned here I've had CI names come back for ESX servers as

'org.mozilla.javascript.NativeArray@aab2b7'

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has had this issue and how they resolved it.

[lharrison]

* Bump *

Can anyone help??

[anders9 · Accepted solution]

Hello Larissa,

There are two sides to the discovery here. One is the vCenter discovery that will connect to the vCenter API and collect information about the VMware environment such as ESX servers, resource pools and virtual machine instances. Generalising a little the virtual machine instance is a VMware configuration which could run an operating system and contains a UUID which is a unique identifier.

The other side of discovery here is the "operating system" discovery and in your case when discovery finds the Windows server running extracting information such as os version, cpu, ram, etc. If it's a VMware environment it will match the serial number with the UUID and link the two CIs together.

Finally - I'm wondering if the case that you see a "computer" as well as a "windows server" is due to that the Windows Server table is extended from the computer table? I would expect these CIs to have the same "sys id" - so they're basically the same record.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Anders

[lharrison]

Thanks Anders,

So, am I able to go ahead and delete the 'computer' records if there is a 'windows server' record for the same device?

It's not clear to a change initiator which record to choose when there are two or three different class records for the same device.   Wouldn't it just be easier to have a record for the virtual class and a separate record for the Operating Systems itself - it's a tad confusing. How important are these records over the Virtual Machine Instance records?

The 'windows server' table extends the 'server' table which in turn extends 'computer' (out of the box, I assume as we didn't set this up).

Apologies for all the questions - trying to get my head around it and how to best clean up the CMDB.

Thanks, in advance

Larissa