Overview of CMDB Health

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Overview of CMDB Health

    The CMDB Health feature monitors and reports on the quality of your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) data through key performance indicators (KPIs) and associated sub-metrics. It evaluates four main KPIs:

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    • Completeness: Checks if required and recommended fields in Configuration Items (CIs) are populated.
    • Correctness: Validates data integrity using rules such as duplicate detection, orphan CIs, and stale CIs.
    • Compliance: Audits CIs against predefined certificates for adherence.
    • Relationships: Assesses health of CI relationships, including orphan or duplicate relationships and adherence to relationship rules.

    Results from these health tests are aggregated by class, health group, service, and relationships, and displayed on CMDB Health dashboards for comprehensive visibility.

    CMDB Health Dashboards and Reporting

    ServiceNow provides multiple dashboards accessible via CMDB Workspace or Service Graph Workspace, enabling you to analyze CMDB health across different dimensions:

    • Main CMDB Health Dashboard: Offers views by Class, Service, and Health Group with access to remediation tasks for CIs that fail health tests.
    • Relationship Health Dashboard: Focuses on relationship-specific health issues like duplicates and orphans.
    • CI Health Report: Available on individual CI forms to view detailed health status through interactive widgets.

    These dashboards help you quickly identify non-compliant CIs and take corrective action.

    Setup and Configuration

    To leverage CMDB Health, you must enable and configure the CMDB Health Dashboard jobs and related system properties. Key configuration components include:

    • CI Class Manager: Centralized tool to manage CI classes and configure health test rules such as orphan rules, audit certificates, and recommended fields.
    • CMDB Health Preferences: Allows activation/deactivation of KPIs and metrics, setting failure thresholds, managing remediation task creation, and controlling dashboard job execution.

    This configuration ensures health assessments align with your organization’s standards.

    CI Remediation and Domain Separation

    CMDB Health supports a framework for CI remediation, enabling proactive, standardized corrective actions on unhealthy CIs.

    The feature is domain aware, so if domain separation is enabled, health data and rules apply based on the logged-in user’s domain, inheriting settings from parent domains when necessary.

    What ServiceNow Customers Can Expect

    By implementing CMDB Health, you gain continuous, detailed insights into the quality of your CMDB data, helping you maintain accurate, compliant, and reliable configuration information. The dashboards and reports streamline identification of data issues, support targeted remediation, and help uphold CMDB integrity critical for IT service management and operational excellence.

    Learn about the benefits, configuration, and usage of the CMDB Health feature.

    The health of the CMDB data is monitored and reported for the following KPIs, each further consisting of sub-metrics:
    Completeness
    CIs are tested for required and recommended fields that are not populated.
    Correctness
    CIs are tested against predefined data integrity rules such as identification rules (to detect duplicate CIs), orphan CI rules, and stale CI rules.
    Compliance
    The CMDB data is audited for adherence to predefined certificates.
    Relationships
    The health of CI relationships is tested for indicators such as orphan and duplicate relationships, and for compliance with suggested relationships, hosting and containment rules.

    After CIs are tested for various health indicators (metrics), the results are aggregated at the class, health group, service, and relationship level, and appear on CMDB Health dashboards. For most metrics, you can configure the health tests themselves to determine how compliance and non-compliance of CIs are evaluated.

    For more details about the KPIs and their associated metrics, see CMDB Health KPIs and metrics.

    Note:
    CMDB Health doesn't support non-CMDB tables.

    CMDB Health dashboards and reports

    You can view CMDB Health dashboards and reports in CMDB Workspace or in Service Graph Workspace. Those dashboards show CMDB Health aggregated results for compliant and non-compliant CIs for CMDB Health KPIs and their metrics.

    Dashboard/Report Use
    CMDB Health Dashboard
    1. Navigate to Workspaces > Service Graph Workspace.
    2. On the navigation panel, select the Insights icon.
    3. In the Insights navigation panel, select CMDB Health.
    or:
    1. Navigate to Workspaces > CMDB Workspace.
    2. Select Home in the CMDB Workspace menu bar.
    3. In the Quick links section select the CMDB Health Dashboard link.
    or:
    1. Navigate to All > Configuration > CMDB Health Dashboard.
    2. Select one of the views.
    		 Main CMDB Health Dashboard with the following views:
    Class View
    • Shows CIs and classes health reports with aggregations for metrics, KPIs, and class branches.
    • Access to remediation tasks that were generated for CIs that failed a health test.
    Service View
    • Shows service health reports.
    • Detailed health for CIs per service with aggregations for metrics and services.
    • Access to remediation tasks that were generated for CIs in a service that failed a health test.
    Health Group View
    • Shows health reports for CMDB groups of type Health.
    • Detailed health for CIs in the group, with aggregations for KPIs, metrics, and health groups.

    In either dashboard view you can select CMDB Health settings to manage the CMDB Health Dashboard jobs and configure other CMDB Health settings. For more information, see Configuring CMDB Health.
    Relationship Health Dashboard
    1. Navigate to Workspaces > CMDB Workspace.
    2. Select Home in the CMDB Workspace menu bar.
    3. In the Quick links section select the Relationship Health Dashboard link.
    		 Shows various charts for relationships health, such as duplicate, orphan, and stale relationships. For more information, see View relationships health.
    CI health report
    • On a CI form that isn't in CMDB Workspace and in Service Graph Workspace select Open in Workspace to view CI health.
    • In CMDB Workspace, select a CI in a list view to open the CI's form. For example, on the CMDB Health Dashboard, drill down a KPI tile and then select a CI in the tile's list view.
    		 On a CI form, the CI Health tile contains widgets that show CIs health reports. Select the right (>) or left (<) handles in the CI Health tile to scroll through the widgets.

    Setup and configuration

    To start gathering and aggregating health data, you must enable the CMDB Health-related jobs (CMDB Health Dashboard jobs) which are initially disabled. You also need to configure CMDB Health related system properties and health KPIs and metric test rules, to reflect health standards in your organization.

    For details about setting up and configuring CMDB Health, see Configuring CMDB Health.

    Location Configuration
    CI Class Manager

    Configuration > CI Class Manager

    Central location to manage CI classes and to configure CMDB health settings. Use the CI Class Manager to Manage rules and definitions that are used for health tests, such as orphan rules, audit certificates, and recommended fields rule.

    For information about configuring KPI and metric tests, see CMDB Health KPIs and metrics.
    CMDB Health Preferences

    Navigate to Configuration > Health Preferences, or perform the following steps:

    1. Navigate to All > Configuration > CMDB Health Dashboard.
    2. Select a view.
    3. On the CMDB Health Dashboard, select CMDB Health settings.
    		 Central location for configuring CMDB Health settings:
    • Configure CMDB Health system properties.
    • Enable and manage the CMDB Health Dashboard jobs.
    • Activate or deactivate KPIs and metrics.
    • Set the maximum failure threshold for the KPIs and metrics.
    • Configure creation of tasks for failed CIs.

    CI remediation

    CMDB Health provides a framework for configuring CI remediation. Remediation lets you proactively apply corrective actions to unhealthy CIs in a managed and standardized fashion.

    Domain separation

    CMDB Health is domain aware. If the domain separation plugin has been activated, then the CMDB Health Dashboard shows health based on data, rules, and settings from the logged-on user domain. If rules and settings aren't defined for a child domain, then the parent's settings are applied, recursively.

    For more information, see Domain separation in CMDB Health.