K18 - Cloud Management Fundamentals 1 - May 6-7 - Everett Thompson

[Hissam Kaleel]

Course: Cloud Management Fundamentals
Dates: May 6 & 7
Rooms: Delfino 4101AB/4102
Primary Instructor: Everett Thompson

This forum is for the Knowledge18 Pre-Conference Training of Cloud Management Fundamentals 1.

Communicate with your classmates and ask questions to our staff.

[Ryan Zulli]

Hi Everyone!

[doug_schulze]

Hi Ryan

[Sharon Hobart]

Welcome!

[everett_thompso]

Good morning and welcome to Day 1. Please use this forum to post questions...

[ppaluri]

Hello!

[Daniel Borkowi1]

Good morning everyone!

[Nate Anderson]

Hello and welcome everyone! Going to be an exciting week!!

[kenbridgeman]

Regarding Regions/Datacenters - The datacenter list in Jakarta is a cross-product of datacenters/regions per account/subscriptions.  In other words, I have been unable to find a simple unique list of regions/datacenters in which to provide a common selection.

This is important to me because we build a naming convention for Load Balancers, VMs and other resources partially based on an abbreviation associated with the datacenter.  So, we'd like to associate that abbreviation with a unique list of datacenters.  And, I'm sure there are other uses of a unique list of regions.

[kenbridgeman]

I'm confused about the various roles and license costs.  Must a cloud user, i.e. somebody that would use the cloud portal, consume an ITSM license?  Does that make sense?

[Sharon Hobart]

Here's a link to the various roles provided:  https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/kingston-it-operations-management/page/product/cloud-management-v2/concept/cloud-roles.html

Cloud Management Platform is a separately licensed subscription.   It is a different licensing structure and is not based off ITIL roles, like with ITSM products.  The suggestion is to work back through your Sales contact with ServiceNow for any licensing questions and better understanding.

[Nate Anderson]

For license costs associated to roles, please work with your sales or account manager and they should be able to get you details on that. 

[daved_]

Anyone know if there is plans to implement PowerShell on the Linux MID server in the future?

[Nate Anderson]

I'm not sure there is anything out of box that would help or automagically perform this association for you. If the abbreivations are standardized, a Fix Script could be created and executed that contains your lookup logic to perform the associations once your data centers are setup. 

[Nate Anderson]

So i was going to start this with saying powershell doesn't exist yet for linux... but it looks like they (microsoft) just released Powershell Core 6.0; for Linux this year. That being said, we'd still need ServiceNow to add in that capability to the MID Servers and recognize "If they're on linux, call powershell correctly for linux". You might also run into other limitations depending on what all is available for Linux. 

Bigger question though... what are some of the reasons you would want to run it on linux? If you're targeting Windows machines with powershelll, Would there not be a windows machine to install it on?  

[doug_schulze]

There is always talk of it around the development water cooler , so Im sure one day we will have it.  Cost is the big driver for customers, folks just hate paying for Windows licenses..

[Sharon Hobart]

Amazon Self-Paced Training. Get hands-on practice in a live AWS environment with AWS services and real-world cloud scenarios.   https://aws.amazon.com/training/self-paced-labs/

Azure Self-Paced Training. Enjoy hands-on learning on your schedule with our free, Self-paced Labs, and keep your cloud knowledge fresh.  https://www.microsoft.com/handsonlabs/SelfPacedLabs

[Sharon Hobart]

Handy Links about Cloud Discovery: 

• Overview: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/kingston-it-operations-management/page/product/discovery/concept/cloud-discovery.html 

• Data collected for AWS and Azure discovery:  https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/kingston-it-operations-management/page/product/discovery/concept/cloud-resource-discovery.html 

• vCenter data collected:https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/jakarta-it-operations-management/page/product/discovery/reference/r_VCenterDataCollected.html

[Sharon Hobart]

More information on Docs site on AWS Credential setup.  This is documented well in Lab 2.1  https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/kingston-it-operations-management/page/product/cloud-management-v2/concept/cloud-management-creds-aws.html

[Sharon Hobart]

Useful List of common tables used in Cloud Managemnet that may not be readily accessible in the navigation menu:

• AWS Cost import data: sn_cmp_imp_aws_cost.list (import table used by transform maps)
• Azure Cost import data: sn_cmp_imp_azure_cost (import table from billing job used by transform map)
• Azure Enterprise Agreement Credentials (billing). sn_cmp_azure_ea_credential
• Billing Job Log: sn_cmp_billing_job_log
• Blueprints: sn_cmp_bp_blueprint
• Cloud Cost Reports: sn_cmp_cost
• Cloud Cost Resources: sn_cmp_cost_rsrc
• Discovery Schedule: discovery_schedule
• Discovery Status: discovery_status
• Hardware templates: cmdb_ci_compute_template
• List of all Cloud Events: sn_cmp_cloud_event
• OS templates: cmdb_ci_os_template.list
• Resource Scripts sn_cmp_rb_resourcescript 
• Sn_capi_provider_property: list of provider properties used during the import process for billing as an example.
• Sn_cmp_order - cloud orchestration list and good place to find errors
• Stack Items: sn_cmp_stack_item
• Stack Items: sn_cmp_stack_item
• Stacks: sn_cmp_stack
• Tag Definitions: sn_cmp_tag_name
• Tag values from discovery: Cmdb_key_value
• Used by cmdb_ci_vm_instance as a related table: sn_cmp_rsrc_tag_history

New ones added:

[elainesammons]

Our organization is implementing project management, and as part of that process they are considering not using t-shirt sizes and developing another description/measurement for project size. Now that I know in the cloud set up environment they also refer to t-shirt sizes I want to know if the measurement is changed from t-shirt size to something else in project management does that impact all of ServiceNow or only the project module. My concern is it probably does impact all so we would not want to select something for projects that does not make sense for orchestration type work. 

[Nate Anderson]

My two cents would be to use the naming that makes the most sense for your process area. In regards to "shared values" the options in cloud management are completely separate from the Project and SDLC modules of ServiceNow. So you can edit one without affecting the other.

When it comes to use the same terms or not. You're going to have to do some level of "explanation". In short, I would use whatever makes the most sense for people in that process area. If the Non T-shirt sizes give you more information for their choices then go with em. If you're just calling something "Big" instead of "Large" or "Really big" Instead of 2XL ... then you're not necessarily gaining a whole lot there other than calling it something different. The biggest thing is making sure you can get high adoption from the people using it, without a lot of training or "re-learning". 

[Sharon Hobart]

To add to Nate's comments, a later lab will introduce you to how this will and can be setup - and you can apply naming standards/conventions that make sense to your organization.

[Nate Anderson]

Looking at cloud events list in the admin portal, and it doesn't seem there is a way to see what you filtered when doing show matching.. nor is there the normal list filtering / search options..? Is there something we're missing? We clicked around a lot of places. 

[Sharon Hobart]

Agree with Nate....  Do not see any options available to see the filter or reset it.

[elainesammons]

What are some examples that cause an organization to unexpectedly go severely over budget on their cloud usage? 

[Sharon Hobart]

Amazon CLI Install:  https://aws.amazon.com/cli/?sc_channel=PS&sc_campaign=acquisition_US&sc_publisher=google&sc_medium=command_line_b&sc_content=aws_cli_bmm&sc_detail=%2Bcli%20%2Baws&sc_category=command_line&sc_segment=159752350301&sc_matchtype=b&sc_country=US&s_kwcid=AL!4422!3!159752350301!b!!g!!%2Bcli%20%2Baws&ef_id=V1HCBQAAALm4nAii:20180104185917

[Sharon Hobart]

AWS CloudFormation simplifies provisioning and management on AWS. You can create templates for the service or application architectures you want and have AWS CloudFormation use those templates for quick and reliable provisioning of the services or applications (called “stacks”). You can also easily update or replicate the stacks as needed.

https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/aws-cloudformation-templates/

[Jeff Bascou]

The lab materials are available for Modules 9 (Azure) and 10 (VMware) at https://servicenow.app.box.com/v/cmfksupportfiles. Are the non-lab (main course) materials available for these Modules?

[Jeff Bascou]

How long will this site be available on Community?

[Daniel Borkowi1]

This article will live forever.

[Sharon Hobart]

Expression Mapping in Blueprints:  https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/kingston-it-operations-management/page/product/cloud-management-v2/reference/expressions-cmp.html

You can use expressions in policy actions to set or override values. You can use expressions in blueprints to access attributes of resources and to map values to request form fields.

[Sharon Hobart]

Permissions management for Cloud Management roles:  https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/kingston-it-operations-management/page/product/cloud-management-v2/concept/cloud-permissions.html

[Sharon Hobart]

Links on public versus private images: Making an AMI public: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/sharingamis-intro.html

[Nate Anderson]

Heya, 

trying to think of some answers and pointers on this. Unfortunately I don't have any specific examples of customers where these conversations have come up (or happened to them). 

Are there some particular things you're concerned might crop up?  

[Nate Anderson]

Looking for good dev tools:

Sublime Text3; Lots of packages and very community extended text editor.

SN Utils chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/servicenow-utils/jgaodbdddndbaijmcljdbglhpdhnjobg?hl=en

SNdExplore: https://thewhitespace.io/applications/xplore-developer-toolkit/

[SNFan]

Hi - Do you have any suggestions about what an initial implementation would look like from a Cloud Services perspective? Are there certain types of services that people implement first? e.g. Compute for Dev envs?

Are there certain considerations that impact the selection? e.g. If the organization is already using AWS vs starting a migration?

[Sharon Hobart]

Policy Triggers:  https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/kingston-it-operations-management/page/product/cloud-management-v2/concept/cloud-policy.html

[Sharon Hobart]

Azure VM Sizes: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/sizes 

AWS VM Sizes/Pricing:  https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/

[Sharon Hobart]

I will ask if that is or will be available.