CMDB Health KPIs and metrics

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of CMDB Health KPIs and metrics

    CMDB Health evaluates the overall condition of your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) by calculating an aggregated score based on three Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): correctness, completeness, and compliance. Each KPI consists of multiple sub-metrics that allow you to monitor and improve the quality and reliability of your CMDB data. You can configure which KPIs and metrics are included in evaluations and dashboards to tailor the monitoring to your organizational needs.

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    Key Features

    • Correctness KPI: Measures data accuracy through three metrics:
      • Orphan: Percentage of orphan Configuration Items (CIs) that are no longer needed or lack valid relationships.
      • Staleness: Percentage of CIs not updated within a defined time period (default 60 days), including stale relationships. Discovery integration marks VMware vCenter CIs as stale when they no longer physically exist.
      • Duplicate: Percentage of duplicate independent CIs identified using identification rules, helping eliminate redundant records.
    • Completeness KPI: Measures how complete CI records are by evaluating:
      • Required fields: Percentage of CIs missing mandatory fields defined in the system dictionary.
      • Recommended fields: Percentage of CIs missing recommended fields, which can be configured using scheduled jobs to align with identification rules.
    • Compliance KPI: Based on results from CMDB audits comparing actual field values against expected values defined in template or scripted audits. Audit activation is required for this KPI to be populated. Scripted audits require custom updates to record run times for compliance.
    • Relationships Health: Tracks relationship-specific metrics including duplicate relationships, orphan relationships missing parent or child CIs, and stale relationships linked to stale CIs. It also reports compliance against suggested, containment, and hosting relationship rules.

    Practical Use for ServiceNow Customers

    By leveraging CMDB Health KPIs and metrics, you can ensure your CMDB data is accurate, complete, and compliant with organizational policies and audit requirements. The integrated dashboards enable you to identify and remediate orphaned, stale, or duplicate CIs and relationships, improving the reliability of your service management processes. Configurable system properties and scheduled jobs allow tailoring of health evaluations to your environment, including the ability to exclude data sources like Discovery from certain KPIs if desired.

    Activating audits and maintaining them ensures your compliance status is current and visible within CMDB Health. Understanding and monitoring these KPIs provide transparency into CMDB quality, helping reduce risk and improve decision-making based on CMDB data.

    Next Steps

    • Access the CMDB Health dashboard to view real-time CMDB quality scores and drill down into specific health results.
    • Configure KPI and metric preferences to align health monitoring with your organization's priorities.
    • Activate and maintain CMDB audits to populate compliance metrics.
    • Review and adjust staleness and orphan rules to accurately reflect your asset lifecycle and data governance policies.
    • Use scheduled jobs to manage recommended fields aligned with identification rules for completeness monitoring.

    CMDB Health calculates an aggregated score for three Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which are correctness, compliance, and completeness, each further consisting of sub-metrics.

    You can configure which KPIs and metrics are included in CMDB Health evaluations and dashboards. In the base system, all KPIs and all their metrics are included.

    To access the CMDB Health dashboard and view CMDB health, see View CMDB Health Dashboard.

    Correctness

    A KPI which is an aggregation of the following metrics:

    Orphan
    Measures the percentage of orphan CIs in the CMDB. A CI can become orphan if it was unintentionally left in the CMDB when it is no longer needed. A CI is determined to be orphan if:
    • The CI satisfies the criteria in an orphan rule. This criteria checks for specific attributes that a CI must have, and for CIs that have no relationships or that don't have specific relationships.
    • Data is missing for the CI in its respective table, or in one of its parents' table.
    Staleness

    Measures the percentage of stale CIs in the CMDB. A CI is stale if it was not updated within the Effective Duration time period that is specified in the staleness rule that applies to the class.

    The base system includes a default staleness rule for the Configuration Item [cmdb_ci] class, which sets the Effective Duration time to 60 days. This rule applies to all extended CMDB classes, and can be overridden by class specific staleness rules defined by the user. To determine CI staleness, a staleness rule for the CI's class is used if it exists, otherwise, the default staleness rule is used.

    In addition, a relationship in which a stale CI is a parent or a child, is determined to be a stale relationship.

    Note:

    Discovery marks VMware vCenter CIs that no longer physically exist, as stale. By default, this setting takes precedence over a CMDB Health staleness rule defined for the CI. When drilling-down in the CMDB Health dashboard to Health Results, the Source for CIs determined to be stale by Discovery, is Cloud Discovery.

    For the aggregated score of the correctness KPI to include only health results generated by CMDB Health, set the glide.cmdb.health.src.cmdb_health_audit_only system property to true. In which case, drilling-down to the details of stale CIs still shows those CIs in which source is Cloud Discovery. For more information, see CMDB Health system properties and Discovery for VMware vCenter.

    Duplicate

    Measures the percentage of duplicate CIs in the CMDB using identification rules. Only independent CIs are evaluated for duplication. In a set of duplicate CIs, the count of duplicate CIs is the total number of CIs in the set, minus one. The detailed graphs for a duplicate set of CIs display all the CIs in the set.

    For more details, examples, and troubleshooting information about duplicate metric, see the CMDB Health - Duplicate Metric - algorithm [KB0726425] knowledge base article.

    Completeness

    A KPI which is an aggregation of the following metrics:

    Required
    Measures the percentage of CIs in which fields that are defined as mandatory, are not populated. Missing fields are tagged as incomplete noting that for this CI some information is missing. Required fields are equivalent to the fields that are specified as mandatory in the system dictionary.
    Recommended

    Measures the percentage of CIs in which fields that are set as recommended, are not populated. Out-of-box, no recommended fields are specified.

    You can use the Add Identifier Fields In Recommended Rules scheduled job to set criterion attributes from active identification rules, as recommended fields. You can use the Remove Identifier Fields In Recommended Rules scheduled job to unset criterion attributes from active identification rules, as recommended fields.

    Compliance

    Based on the results of actual CMDB audit runs.

    Note:
    Audit must be activated for the compliance KPI to show results. For more information, see Compliance Activation.
    Audit

    Audit compares actual values of specified fields, against expected values defined in template and scripted audits. Based on the Last run date of audits, CMDB Health identifies the set of the most recent complete audit run, and uses those audit results. To pass the CMDB Health audit test, a CI must be in compliance with all audits for that CI. Create a compliance-type audit, for which the results are calculated into the CMDB Health compliance KPI.

    When running scripted audits, the Last run date is not populated. Therefore, for the compliance KPI to include the results of a scripted audit, update the script in the audit to record the audit run time.

    Relationships

    Measures the health of CI relationships, consisting of the following metrics which are not-configurable:

    Duplicate relationships
    Relationships that have identical parent and child CIs, identical relationship type, and an identical port. Duplicate relationships are displayed per relationship type. In a set of duplicate relationships, the duplicate relationship count is the total number of duplicate relationships in the set, minus one. The detailed graphs for a duplicate set of relationships display all the relationships in the set.
    Orphan relationships
    A relationship that is missing either a parent CI, a child CI, or both.
    Stale relationships
    A relationship in which the parent CI or the child CI is a stale CI.

    A single relationship can fail more than one health test. For example, a duplicate relationship can also be stale.

    Also reports the following relationship-related summaries:
    • Relations not compliant with suggested relations
    • Relations not compliant with containment rules
    • Relations not compliant with hosting rules

    To access the Relationship Health dashboard and view relationships health, see View relationships health.