Software model relationship to software installation
Summarize
Summary of Software model relationship to software installation
Associating software installations with software models in ServiceNow enables audit reporting for both licensable and non-licensable software. Software models can be automatically created based on system properties and discovery matches to streamline this process.
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Key Features
- Automatic Software Model Creation: Enabled via system properties for licensable (
com.snc.samp.automaticsmrcreation) and non-licensable (com.snc.samp.automaticsmcreation) products. - Discovery Model Matching: If a discovery model match exists, even generic ones, software models are not created automatically; instead, matching is done against existing software models.
- Most Specific Match Priority: The system matches software installations to the most specific software model available. If none exists, it defaults to the most generic one.
- Install Conditions: Software models with install conditions are excluded from matches during the automated process; in such cases, new software models without install conditions are created.
- Scheduled Job for Matching: The job "SAM – Discovery Model to Software Model matching" correlates software discovery models with software models based on normalized publisher, product, edition, and version fields.
- Manual Override: Users can manually set or override the matched software model on the Software Discovery Model form. Doing so disables automatic matching for that record in future scheduled job runs.
Practical Examples
- A discovery model for SQL Server 2019 Enterprise matches exactly to the SQL Server 2019 Enterprise software model.
- A discovery model for SQL Server 2019 Enterprise with install conditions matches to a generic SQL Server 2019 software model without install conditions.
- If no suitable software model matches a discovery model with install conditions, and automatic creation is enabled, a new software model (e.g., SQL Server Enterprise version agnostic) is automatically created.
Implications for ServiceNow Customers
By understanding and leveraging software model relationships and discovery model matching, customers can maintain accurate software inventory mappings. This improves license compliance reporting and software audit readiness. Enabling the appropriate system properties and using the scheduled matching job ensures efficient automatic management of software models, while manual overrides provide flexibility when needed.
Associating each software installation with a software model lets you perform audit reporting of licensable and non-licensable software.
Overview
- com.snc.samp.automaticsmrcreation: for licensable products
- com.snc.samp.automaticsmcreation: for non-licensable products
If the system properties are enabled and a discovery model match exists, even if the match is generic, a software model will not be created. If the system properties are not enabled, the software model is just matched to a discovery model; no software models are created.
A match is made to the most specific software model. If no specific software model exists for the discovery model, then the match is made to the most generic software model.
During the matching process, if a matching software model is found, but it has an install condition on it then it's not considered to be a match. In such a scenario, a software model is automatically created without an install condition.
For each normalized publisher and normalized product pair in the Software Discovery Model (cmdb_sam_sw_discovery_model) table, the scheduled job, SAM – Discovery Model to Software Model matching, gets all software models with matching publisher and product. If the software model has no install condition, subscription condition, or DB option, the system gets matching discovery models with normalized publisher, normalized product, normalized edition, and normalized version values. Once a match is found, the software model reference is put on the software model column in the Software Discovery Model [cmdb_sam_sw_discovery_model] table.
Manually set software model
If you choose to match on a more generic software model than what the scheduled job SAM – Discovery Model to Software Model matching sets, you can manually set the desired software model in the form view on the Software Discovery Model (cmdb_sam_sw_discovery_model) table. The Automatically matched column becomes unchecked.
If a software model is set and the Automatically matched column's value is false, the scheduled job will not override the software model value on subsequent executions.
Sample matches
The following are some sample scenarios of software model and discovery model matches.
| Discovery model | Software models | Matches with |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Server 2019 Enterprise |
|
SQL Server 2019 Enterprise software model |
| SQL Server 2019 Enterprise |
|
SQL Server 2019 software model |
| SQL Server 2019 | SQL Server 2019 with install conditions (Edition is anything) | No match found. If the system property is enabled, a new software model will be created: SQL Server Enterprise (Version is anything). |