Hardware life cycle
Summarize
Summary of Hardware Life Cycle in ServiceNow
The Common Service Data Model (CSDM) framework in ServiceNow offers standard fields and values to track the life cycle of hardware assets and Configuration Items (CIs). This framework helps manage and monitor the various life cycle states that hardware assets undergo, from procurement to retirement.
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Key Features
- Life Cycle States: Represents the combined life cycle stage and status of hardware assets, visible within hardware-related tables in Asset Management and CMDB.
- Life Cycle Stages: Broad phases such as procurement, operational, and retirement that a CI progresses through.
- Life Cycle Status: Specific statuses within a stage, such as In Use, In Maintenance, or End of Support.
- CMDB Hardware Tables: Includes various types of hardware like accessories, communication devices, and storage devices, each tracked in dedicated CMDB tables.
Key Outcomes
Understanding hardware life-cycle states enables ServiceNow customers to effectively manage their hardware assets, ensuring that they are accounted for throughout their entire life span. Customers can anticipate better resource allocation, improved asset utilization, and informed decision-making regarding hardware retirement and reallocation. The relationship between hardware CIs and application services allows for a clearer overview of dependencies, aiding in more effective service management.
The CSDM framework provides standard fields and values that you can use to track the life cycle of an asset or a CI. The hardware life-cycle states represent the overall life cycle of hardware assets and CIs as related to their products.
Hardware life-cycle states
Hardware assets are physical items that are stocked, for example servers, monitors, and keyboards. A life-cycle state is the combination life-cycle stage and life-cycle status of an asset or CI over the life cycle. The stages and statuses for the hardware life-cycle process are visible only in hardware-related tables in Asset Management and CMDB.
- A Life cycle stage is one of the broad phases that a CI moves through, from inception or procurement to retirement and end of life.
- Life cycle stage status is the specific status of a CI within its current life cycle stage.
For additional information on how you can benefit from implementing life-cycle value pairs for CMDB entities, see the 'life-cycle value pair' section in the 'Foundation domain' topic.
Holistic life cycle: CMDB hardware tables (from cmdb_ci)
| CMDB hardware tables | CMDB hardware table name |
|---|---|
| Accessory | cmdb_ci_acc |
| Communication Device | cmdb_ci_comm |
| Computer Peripheral | cmdb_ci_peripheral |
| Computer Room AC | cmdb_ci_crac |
| Display Hardware | cmdb_ci_display_hardware |
| Facility Hardware | cmdb_ci_facility_hardware |
| Hardware | cmdb_ci_hardware |
| Imaging Hardware | cmdb_ci_imaging_hardware |
| IP Device | cmdb_ci_ip_device |
| Monitoring Equipment | cmdb_ci_monitoring_hardware |
| Network Adaptor | cmdb_ci_network_adaptor |
| Printing Hardware | cmdb_ci_printing_hardware |
| Rack | cmdb_ci_rack |
| Storage Device | cmdb_ci_storage_device |
Example hardware classes
View attributes, identification rule, and other important schema structures for the CMDB Computer [cmdb_ci_computer] class. See Hardware [cmdb_ci_hardware] class.
How retiring an application service might affect a hardware CI
An application service is the logical representation of the underlying hardware and software CIs that work together to implement a business application or system. The application service represents an instance of the business application or system.
Hardware and software CIs are managed using the physical life cycle states. Because an application service is a logical representation, it is managed as using the logical life-cycle states. The physical hardware CIs that are part of the service map under an application service have their own life cycle, but they are related through the application services as a specific set of dependencies or decomposition.
- Example 1: A hardware CI is not retired when the application service is retired
When an application service is retired, the associated hardware might not be retired. For example, the hardware might remain idle, unrelated to any application service, until it is reallocated for use by a new application service.
- Example 2: A hardware CI is shared by multiple application services
In the common scenario of a shared database, multiple application services (each with a unique database schema) share a single database service. The database service runs on a single physical host.
When one of the application services is retired, the database service and host cannot be retired. All of the other application services still depend on the database service that is running on the host.