AWS application ELB Service discovery

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of AWS application ELB Service discovery

    The AWS application ELB Service discovery pattern in ServiceNow enables you to discover and map all Elastic Load Balancers (ELBs) in your AWS environment. ELB distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, offering features like ultra-high performance, TLS offloading, centralized certificate deployment, UDP support, and static IP addresses. This pattern supports top-down discovery, starting from HTTP(s) endpoints and mapping relations to Amazon EC2 instances.

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    This discovery pattern is compatible with ServiceNow Kingston and later releases and supports Amazon Commercial Cloud Services (C2S) for government cloud environments. It integrates with ServiceNow’s Cloud Discovery and Service Mapping capabilities.

    Prerequisites

    • Perform a horizontal discovery using Cloud API (CAPI) before running this top-down discovery pattern to ensure load balancer data is present in the CMDB.
    • Create an application service in ServiceNow for each discovered load balancer.
    • Set read-only permissions for specific AWS REST APIs related to ELB and EC2 to enable data retrieval. These APIs include DescribeLoadBalancers, DescribeListeners, DescribeRules, DescribeTargetHealth, and DescribeInstances.
    • Download the Discovery and Service Mapping Patterns from the ServiceNow Store.
    • Ensure your MID Server installation meets the system requirements specified by ServiceNow to support discovery.
    • Consult the Cloud Discovery patterns spreadsheet for required user permissions and pattern details, updating it quarterly for the latest versions.
    • You can test AWS REST API connectivity using tools like Postman, guided by ServiceNow’s knowledge base articles.

    Data Collected

    During horizontal discovery, the pattern collects and stores detailed information about load balancers in the CMDB, including:

    • Fully qualified domain name (FQDN): The DNS name of the load balancer.
    • Name: Load balancer name formatted as <LB name>:<LB port>.
    • Serial Number: Unique identifier formatted as ##ObjectID=<LBARN>.
    • Port: The port used by the load balancer.
    • Object ID: Unique identifier of the load balancer.
    • IP Address: The IP address associated with the FQDN.

    Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    This discovery pattern allows ServiceNow customers to automate the detection and mapping of AWS ELBs, ensuring accurate and up-to-date infrastructure data in the CMDB. This supports better service mapping, cloud governance, and operational visibility, particularly in complex AWS environments or government cloud settings using C2S.

    Discovery uses the Amazon AWS application ELB Service discovery pattern to show all load balancers in your environment in a map.

    Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets.

    The Amazon AWS application ELB Service discovery pattern supports top-down discovery. This pattern discovers all load balancers with these characteristics:
    • Use ultra-high performance, TLS offloading at scale, and centralized certificate deployment
    • Support UDP and static IP addresses for your application

    For top-down discovery, the entry point is HTTP(s) Endpoint. Outgoing relations are to Amazon EC2 instances.

    The ServiceNow AI Platform supports Amazon Commercial Cloud Services (C2S) for discovery and cloud governance. C2S is the government program that brings AWS into the Intelligence Community.

    You can use this pattern on the ServiceNow platform using Kingston or later releases.

    Visit the ServiceNow Store website to view all the available apps and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.

    Prerequisites

    • Run a horizontal discovery, using Cloud API (CAPI). This is necessary because this discovery pattern supports top-down discovery only. For Cloud Discovery, you can run the horizontal discovery as usual.
    • When the load balancers data has been stored in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), create an application service for each load balancer.
    • Set read-only permissions for these REST APIs:
      • https://elasticloadbalancing.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/?Action=DescribeLoadBalancers&LoadBalancerArns.member.1=<LB_ARN>&Version=2015-12-01
      • https://elasticloadbalancing.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/?Action=DescribeLoadBalancers&Version=2015-12-01
      • https://elasticloadbalancing.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/?Action=DescribeListeners&LoadBalancerArn=<LB_ARN>&Version=2015-12-01
      • https://elasticloadbalancing.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/?Action=DescribeRules&ListenerArn=<LISTENER_ARN>&Version=2015-12-01
      • https://elasticloadbalancing.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/?Action=DescribeTargetHealth&TargetGroupArn=<TARGET_GROUP_ARN>&Version=2015-12-01
      • https://ec2.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/?Action=DescribeInstances&Version=2016-11-15&Filter.1.Name=instance-state-name&Filter.1.Value=running&Filter.2.Name=instance-id&Filter.2.Value=<INSTANCE_ID>
    • For Cloud Discovery, download the Discovery and Service Mapping Patterns from the ServiceNow Store.
    • When installing the MID Server, ensure that the host machine meets or exceeds the MID Server system requirements published on the ServiceNow documentation site.

    Verify the REST API Permissions

    Download the Cloud Discovery patterns spreadsheet so you can grant user permissions required for running the Discovery patterns. In addition to permissions, the spreadsheet also includes useful information such as pattern names, types, CI Classes, and links to vendor documentation. New patterns are available quarterly, so check periodically to be sure you have the latest version of the spreadsheet.

    Note:
    You can test the AWS REST APIs using Postman API platform. For more information, see the How to test AWS REST API using POSTMAN [KB0782183] article in the Now Support Knowledge Base.

    Data collected by Discovery during horizontal discovery

    The discovered data includes the following tables and fields.

    Table and field Description
    Load Balancer Services [cmdb_ci_lb_service]
    Fully qualified domain name [fqdn] Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of the load balancer. The DNS name.
    Name [name] Name of the load balancer, in the following format: <LB name>:<LB port>.
    Serial Number [serial_number] Serial number of the load balancer, in the following format: ##Object_ID=<LB_ARN>.
    Port [port] Port of the load balancer.
    Object ID [object_id] Unique identifier of the load balancer.
    IP Address [ip_address] IP address of the FQDN.