Percentage of Dynamic CI Groups with CMDB Group

Get Well Playbook

A step-by-step guide to analyze and remediate the Dynamic CI Groups for which CMDB Group is not specified

Table of Contents

Summary

Goal of this Playbook

Audience

Problem Overview

Executive Summary

How this playbook can help you achieve business goals

How this playbook is structured

Problem Analysis

Upstream Causes

Downstream Consequences

Impact on Your Business

Engagement Questions

Remediation Plays

Summary

Play 1: Analysis

Play 2: Fix Play

Play 3: Fix Play

Data Governance

Summary

Goal of this Playbook

The goal of this playbook is to help you identify and manage Dynamic CI Groups which do not have a CMDB Group populated

Details about this playbook

Author

Bibu Elias Punnachalil

Date

03/18/2021

Addresses HSD #

HSD0009408

Applicable ServiceNow Releases

All Releases

Prerequisites

CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboards Version 1.3.0 or above

Time Required

Approximately 1 to 4 hours (depending on your environment)

Audience

Configuration Manager or Configuration Management team CI Owner ServiceNow Administrator Note : As you follow the instructions in this playbook, you may need help from people with the following roles:

ServiceNow Administrator

Problem Overview

A Dynamic CI group is a dynamic grouping of configuration items (CIs), based on a criteria defined through a CMDB group. Dynamic CI groups were called as "Technical Services" before Paris version and used to allow selection of CIs based on some common criteria. This was restrictive where as CMDB group provides an approach to include CIs by creating encoded query on the CMDB, selecting saved queries or adding CIs manually . Dynamic CI groups utilize the CMDB groups to create the required grouping of CIs, but the technical services migrated from previous versions(Prior to Paris version) does not automatically utilize CMDB groups

This playbook helps to analyze the dynamic CI groups missing the CMDB groups and provide ways to fix them

Executive Summary

How this playbook can help you achieve business goals

This playbook helps in migrating CI Class selection conditions specified as part of Dynamic CI group into new CMDB groups. This helps in,

Making your dynamic CI groups more inclusive with Cis from various classes Avoiding duplication of dynamic CI groups Being upgrade friendly How this playbook is structured

This playbook guides you through five plays.

Play 1 (an analysis play) helps you find the Dynamic CI groups which does not have associated CMDB groups Play 2 (the First of the two fix plays)) Find out if any CMDB groups which are present already can be used for dynamic CI groups Play 3 (the Second of the two fix plays) shows you how to create CMDB groups through a script based on the table conditions present in Play 4 (a Data Governance play) lists the guidelines and processes for dynamic CI group management. Use these guidelines to monitor & maintain CMDB group presence in dynamic CI groups

Problem Analysis

Upstream Causes

Paris release changed the naming of Technical Services to Dynamic CI Group along with a functionality change to utilize CMDB group. The technical services created before Paris release are available as Dynamic CI group without CMDB group in Paris and future releases. There are Dynamic CI groups created manually but CMDB group is not specified Downstream Consequences

Data Consequence

CMDB groups has capability to include configuration items from various classes and also using the CI relationships. Not using the CMDB groups may require compromise to not include all relevant CIs in the dynamic CI group making the Dynamic CI group incomplete Operation Consequence

Dynamic CI groups helps to identify the impact quickly through the monitored services in event management. Having all the required CIs in Dynamic CI groups help in accurate impact analysis of incidents Dynamic CI groups can be used to auto populate(using business rules) all the affected CIs during a change. In case the affected CIs is not completely identified the change may not be successful (( Eg:missing servers in patch management) Dynamic CI groups in the event dashboard helps in monitoring the consolidated health and take quick action in case of an alert

App Consequence

Future versions after Paris release, the new dynamic CI groups are expected to use CMDB. Having all the dynamic groups aligned to the new structure will help in future manageability and upgradeability

Impact on Your Business

Inaccurate Dynamic CI groups result in,

Increased MTTR & Reduced Service Availability Having inaccurate dynamic CI groups, event management cannot utilize this to show the service impact based on the alert on Configuration Item. This results in agents not able to respond to the alert quickly , not able to prioritize it accurately and takes more time to identify the root cause resulting in more service downtime/degradation Less Successful Changes Change management not being able to use the Dynamic CI groups effectively for impact analysis. In case business rules are created to populate affected CIs based on Dynamic CI Group, the populated CIs may be incomplete. This results in inaccurate change impact analysis and also missing updates to infrastructure/applications(Eg . Patches, releases not performed on all required configuration items)

Engagement Questions:

Consider the answers to these questions:

Are you using dynamic CI groups as part of your application services? Do you use event management and monitored services for your alert management?

Remediation Plays

Summary

The table below lists and summarizes each of the remediation plays in the playbook. Details are included later.

Play

Play 1: Analysis

What this play is about

This play helps you find the dynamic CI groups not having CMDB group

Required tasks

Follow the steps to identify the records

Play 2 : (1 of 2 Fix Plays) Find out if any CMDB groups which are present already can be used for dynamic CI groups

What this play is about

This play helps you find if a CMDB groups which is existing already and associate it to the dynamic CI group

Required tasks

Follow the steps to identify the records and update dynamic CI group

Play 3: (1 of 2 Fix Plays )

Create CMDB groups through a script based on the table conditions present in dynamic CI groups

What this play is about

This play tells you how to create CMDB group and associate it to the dynamic CI group

Required tasks

Follow the steps to update the records.

Play 1 - Review your data

What this Play is about

Identify dynamic CI groups not having associated CMDB group

Required tasks

Install CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboard from the ServiceNow App Store Navigate to the CSDM Data Foundations Dashboard module in the left navigation menu Select the Walk tab

Select the Dynamic CI Groups without CMDB Group report. If you see a result of 0 then this playbook is not applicable to you. Drilling down on Dynamic CI Groups without CMDB Group report will provide you with the list of dynamic ci groups which require fixing

Play 2 – Fix Play

What this Play is about

This play tells you if there is an existing CMDB group having the same condition as the table/filter condition which is migrated from technical services

Roles Required: admin

Note : The script is helpful to find any filter which is having conditions and the order of the conditions same. Please check all the CMDB groups manually as well to ensure that you are not creating any duplicate group

Required tasks

Run this script as a Fix Script. Fix script will produce an output as given below

To update the matching records run this script by giving the appropriate CMDB Group name and the matching Dynamic CI group. The script will remove the table and filter condition from Dynamic CI group and update the given CMDB group. Before running the script provide the name the Dynamic CI group and CMDB group name inside the script

Play 3 - Fix Play

What this Play is about

This play creates the CMDB group with the name of Technical Service and copying the table and filter condition as an encoded query in CMDB group

Required tasks

Make the list of Dynamic CI groups for which you need a new CMDB group to be created Run this script as a Fix Script. This fix script creates the CMDB groups based on the table and filter condition and links it to the Dynamic CI group. The script will remove the deprecated table and filter values. Before running the script provide the name of the dynamic CI group (which has a table filter condition present) the script

Data Governance

What this play is about

Regularly monitor the number of locations that do not have parent locations. This play explains how to run a specific report that shows you that level of detail.

Required tasks

Use the CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboard for ongoing monitoring, refer to the first play Set up a Data Certification workflow that assigns the a task for the update of missing CMDB group For more information about using Data Certification, see Data Certification

Congratulations

You have completed this Get Well Playbook.