Resource Profiles

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Resource Profiles

    Resource profiles are cloud provider-agnostic definitions that allow you to control the attribute values for cloud resources. They simplify the resource request process by providing predefined options, reducing the need for unique blueprints for each resource variation.

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    Key Features

    • Resource Profile Mappings: Establish connections between cloud accounts, logical datacenters, specific resource types in the CMDB, and optional pricing values.
    • Types of Resource Profiles: Various profiles include:
      • Application Profile: Specifies software installations for newly-provisioned resources.
      • Compute Profile: Defines hardware specifications for virtual machines, including CPUs, memory, and storage.
      • Compute Security Group Profile: Applies security rules to resources and maps to specific templates.
      • OS Profile: Installs designated operating system images on virtual machines.
      • Schedule Profile: Determines operational schedules for resource provisioning.
    • Image Template Credentials: Credentials added to an image template are inherited by all VMs provisioned from that template.

    Key Outcomes

    By utilizing resource profiles, ServiceNow customers can streamline cloud resource requests, ensure consistent configurations across resources, and efficiently manage security and operational schedules. This capability enhances user experience and operational efficiency when provisioning cloud resources.

    Resource profiles are cloud provider-agnostic definitions that specify the allowed attribute values for a resource. Resource profiles enable you to control the choices that the user sees when requesting a cloud resource. As a result, you do not need to define a unique blueprint for each variation of the resource.

    Note:
    In addition to the cloud-agnostic profiles, you can add provider public images to the Cloud Provisioning and Governance catalog. See Add an AWS public image to Cloud Provisioning and Governance and Add an Azure public image to Cloud Provisioning and Governance.

    Example: Compute profile

    You might create a compute profile named Micro and map it to a "micro" hardware type, with specified values for memory and CPU. Later, when a user selects a compute resource while requesting a virtual server, Micro appears as an option in the list of available compute resources. The user does not need to specify values for memory and CPU — the values come from the profile.
    Figure 1. Compute profile on the request form
    Compute profile on the request form

    Resource Profile mappings

    Resource profiles create mapping associations between the following items:
    • A cloud account.
    • A logical datacenter in the cloud account.
    • A specific resource type in the CMDB that provides the attributes.
    • Optional: A pricing value that appears to users when they request a resource that uses the resource profile.

    By default for AWS and Azure, Cloud Provisioning and Governance maps profiles to templates after Discovery runs. For other providers, such as Google cloud, you must manually associate the profile with the correct template and datacenter.

    Resource types

    Each resource profile has associated attributes. The attributes depend on the resource types that are populated after you run Discovery on a cloud account.
    Resource profile type Description and attributes Resource type and template
    Application profile An application profile specifies application software to install on newly-provisioned resources. Users can select applications when they request a stack. Use application profiles when you integrate with configuration management (continuous delivery) providers such as Ansible playbooks.

    Attributes: Applications running on virtual machines.

    		 Application Template

    [sn_cmp_application_template]
    Compute profile A compute profile specifies the hardware to use for newly-provisioned virtual machines.

    Attributes: The size of computing resources, including the virtual CPUs, memory, and local storage.

    		 Hardware Type

    [cmdb_ci_compute_template]
    Compute Security Group profile A compute security group profile applies specified security rules to newly-provisioned resources. You map a compute security group profile to a cloud account, a datacenter, a Compute Security Group template, and security rules for the template.

    Attributes: Firewall rules, such as enabling HTTP and HTTPS.

    Compute Security Group Template

    [cmdb_ci_security_grp_template]
    OS profile An OS profile installs a specified image on a newly-provisioned virtual machine. You map an OS profile to a cloud account, a location (datacenter), an image template, and a cloud script.

    Attributes: Operating system images, including the OS type and version, the root device type, and the image source.

    		 Image

    [cmdb_ci_os_template]
    Schedule profile You map a schedule profile to an instance schedule. The schedule profile applies to all newly-provisioned resources that use the profile. For example, a schedule profile can specify the days of the week and times of day when a stack should start and stop.

    Attributes: Schedule attributes such as when a stack should be started, stopped, or deprovisioned.

    		 N/A