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 · ‎11-07-2014

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

anders9 · ‎11-12-2014

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

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james wells · ‎06-15-2017

The vCenter API creates ESX Server and Virtual Machine Instance CIs. This API gets launched when discovery hits a VMware management server IP (aka vCenter server) and talks to the vCenter software running on the server. (A nice feature that does not force me to directly discover all ESX servers by IP address. CIM/SMI-S probes do similar for storage devices).

The Windows server CIs corresponding to the Virtual Machine Instance CIs only come from when discovery comes across its IP and discovers it directly. All relationships between Windows Server, Virtual Machine Instance and ESX Server CIs get created as well. In a large env, managing all the Virtual Machine Instances is difficult so we have been just focused on cmdb_ci_win_server and cmdb_ci_esx_server CIs.

But now we are taking on Azure and the Azure Discovery api gives everything as Virtual Machine Instances. We could deploy MID Servers into Azure but thats a lot moe effort. Any ideas how to get server CIs and VM Instance CIs into a single view for easy consumption?

dome83 · ‎01-16-2018

hi Jim, one info about your last point. You mentioned that all the relationships between the following are created automatically after the discovery:

- OS information stored on table "cmdb_ci_win_server" (discovered through IP/Network probe)

- ESX information stored on table "cmdb_ci_esx_server" (discovered through vSphere API probe)

- VM Instance information stored on table "cmdb_ci_vm_instance" (discovered through vSphere API probe)

Until now on the Suggested Relationship panel I am only able to see the relationship between ESX and VM Instance: as far as you know also the other relationships are covered out of the box by Discovery process or do you have applied customization on it ?

I am referring in particular to the relationship between:

- win_server and esx_server

- vm_instance and win_server

many thx

james wells · ‎01-16-2018

That all should come where you do a horizontal discovery on the Windows server OS. Are you performing a direct discovery on the server's IP using the Windows credential with local admin access? (this will also return the installed software, for example)

dome83 · ‎01-16-2018

yes, my idea is to have local admin credentials for Windows IP Discovery: I have still no MID server in place, i was starting design the Data Model.

In the suggested Relationship I see only relationship between ESX and VM_INSTANCE, I don't see any relationship regarding beteen Windows Server and ESX or Windows Server and VM_INSTANCE, that's why I was asking from where this relationship come from 😮

james wells · ‎01-16-2018

The VM instance CI, ESX server CI and those relationships most often come from a separate "indirect" discovery method that uses the vCenter application probe. Discovery sees a vCenter application running on a Windows server, for example, and launches a probe with an api that logs into the vCenter application console and pulls all the ESX and VM instance info. It could also be described as an integration.... and you don't have to directly discover ESX servers by IP...