APM vendor entity mappings for Service Observability

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
    • Summarize
    Summarized using AI
    This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

    Summary of APM Vendor Entity Mappings for Service Observability

    This document explains how Service Observability integrates with various Application Performance Management (APM) vendors by mapping service, host, and database entities to corresponding resources. This mapping enables the display of metrics from APM vendors on Observability dashboards based on user-defined mapping rules.

    Show full answer Show less

    Key Features

    • Entity Mapping by Vendor: Service Observability supports multiple APM vendors, including Amazon CloudWatch, AppDynamics, Azure, Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Prometheus, and Splunk.
    • Resource Retrieval: Each vendor utilizes specific APIs to retrieve resources, ensuring effective mapping and filtering of entities.
    • Custom Mappings: Users can create mappings for services lacking metadata, allowing for flexible customization of the integration.
    • Dashboard Templates: Default dashboard templates are provided, utilizing key metrics for visualizing requests, errors, and latency.

    Key Outcomes

    By implementing these mappings, ServiceNow customers can:

    • Gain visibility into the performance of services, hosts, and databases across various APM tools.
    • Utilize the Observability dashboards to monitor critical metrics and troubleshoot issues effectively.
    • Customize dashboard templates to better fit their specific monitoring needs and service configurations.
    • Ensure that all relevant APM data is accessible, enhancing operational awareness and response capabilities.

    Understand how Service Observability maps service, host, and database entities to your Application Performance Management (APM) vendor resources.

    Service Observability displays metrics from your APM vendor for services, hosts, and databases on the Observability dashboards based on the key:value pairs in the mapping rules you create during configuration. Service Observability sends a request to the APM vendor using that mapping as a filter to find related entities. Any additional filtering needed to find the entities is noted in the following sections.

    Amazon CloudWatch entity mapping

    Resources are returned using the AWS GetResources API.

    Service Observability entity category Service Observability entity dashboard AWS resource
    Application API Gateway - HTTP API Gateway HTTP APIs
    API Gateway - REST API Gateway REST APIs
    ELB ELB application load balancers
    Lambda Lambda functions
    Compute Host EC2 instances
    Databases RDS RDS database instances

    AppDynamics entity mapping

    Resources are returned using the value of the entityName property.

    Service Observability entity category Service Observability entity dashboard AppDynamics resource
    Application Service AppDynamics applications returned by the /controller/rest/applications/ API
    Compute Host Server nodes for applications returned by the /controller/sim/v2/user/machines/keys/ API
    Databases MySQL MySQL database instances returned by the /controller/rest/databases/collectors/
    PostgreSQL MySQL database instances returned by the /controller/rest/databases/collectors/

    Azure entity mapping

    Resources are returned using the Azure ResourceGraph API.

    Service Observability entity category Service Observability entity dashboard Azure resource
    Application Service

    • Microsoft.Compute/cloudServices

    • Microsoft.Web/sites
    Compute Host

    Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines

    Databases MySQL

    • Microsoft.DBforMySQL/servers

    • Microsoft.DBforMySQL/flexibleServers

    PostgreSQL

    • Microsoft.DBforPostgreSQL/servers

    • Microsoft.DBforPostgreSQL/flexibleServers

    Datadog entity mapping

    Service Observability entity category Service Observability entity dashboard Datadog resource
    Application Service Entities returned from the Software Catalog: List Entities API
    Compute Host Hosts returned from the Hosts: List Hosts API
    Databases MySQL Databases returned by filtering the mysql.net.max_connections metric, filtered by the provided key:value pair in the data mapping.
    Note:
    If your databases don't emit this metric, they aren't mapped.
    PostgreSQL Databases returned by filtering the postgresql.connections metric, filtered by the provided key:value pair in the data mapping.
    Note:
    If your databases don't emit this metric, they aren't mapped.
    Items of note:
    • Service entities: The Software Catalog list entities API only returns data for services that include metadata. If you want to map services that don't include metadata, you must create a mapping using service as the tag and the name of the service as the value.
      For example, say you have a service named internet-banking-4 that you want to use in a mapping and it doesn't contain metadata. You set up the mapping as shown in this screenshot.
      Figure 1. Datadog mapping if no metadata is present
      How to map a service that doesn't contain metadata
    • Default dashboard templates: The Requests, Errors, and Latency charts on the Overview and Observability dashboard templates are created using the Datadog trace.http.request trace metric. If a service isn't emitting that metric, no data is found. You can customize the template to use a different trace metric query. See Customize Service Observability dashboard templates for more information.

    Dynatrace entity mapping

    Service Observability entity category Service Observability entity dashboard Dynatrace resource
    Application Service Services
    Compute Host Hosts
    Databases MySQL MySQL database instances
    PostgreSQL PostgreSQL database instances

    New Relic entity mapping

    Service Observability entity category Service Observability entity dashboard New Relic resource
    Application Service APM application services
    Compute Host Hosts
    Databases MySQL MySQL database instances
    PostgreSQL PostgreSQL database instances

    Prometheus entity mapping

    Service Observability entity category Service Observability entity dashboard Prometheus resource
    Application Service Applications
    Compute Host Server nodes for applications
    Databases MySQL MySQL database instances
    PostgreSQL PostgreSQL database instances

    SolarWinds entity mapping

    Service Observability entity category Service Observability entity dashboard SolarWinds resource
    Application Service APM application services
    Compute Host Hosts

    Splunk entity mapping

    Resources are returned using the Splunk Metric time series Metadata API. Service Observability searches for matching key:value pairs in custom properties and then falls back to searching dimensions.

    The returned payload is then filtered by the presence of a specific metric in the metadata that corresponds with an entity type.

    Service Observability entity category Service Observability entity dashboard Splunk Property or dimension Splunk metric used for filtering
    Application Service

    • Property: sf_service

    • Dimension fallback: service.name

    		 sf_metric:service.request
    Compute Host

    • Property: host.name

    • Dimension fallback: host.id

    		 sf_metric:disk.summary_utilization
    Databases MySQL

    • Property: mysql.instance.name

    • Dimension fallback: mysql.instance.endpoint

    		 sf_metric:mysql.threads
    PostgreSQL Not supported