Active CIs in the Server class without a Location Get Well Playbook Percent of active CIs in the Server class without a Location A step-by-step guide to analyze and remediate active CIs in the Server class without a Location 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: Analyze servers without location Play 2: Fix Play - Update location Data Governance Summary Goal of this Playbook The goal of this playbook is to help you identify and manage Servers with unpopulated locations Details about this playbook Author Bibu Punnachalil Date 06/24/2021 Addresses HSD # HSD0003655 Applicable ServiceNow Releases All Releases Time Required Approximately 1 to 8 hours (depending on your environment) Audience Configuration Manager or Configuration Management teamServiceNow AdministratorDiscovery Administrator Problem Overview The supportability and availability of servers are at risk when the location information is unknown. Hands and feet support, patch deployments, network outage impact assessment, failover planning/execution, and location-specific management reporting are affected when Server locations are not populated Executive Summary How this playbook can help you achieve business goals This playbook helps in identifying and fixing Servers with unpopulated locations, supporting Improved Service AvailabilityImproved Business Continuity Better operational visibility How this playbook is structured This playbook guides you through four plays. Play 1 (an analysis play) helps you find the Servers with unpopulated locationsPlay 2 (a fix play) explains how to update Server locationsPlay 3 (a Data Governance play) lists the guidelines and processes for maintaining Servers with location information Problem Analysis Upstream Causes Discovery schedules with unspecified locationsAsset management system feed or asset management tool integration are not populating location data during Server creationLocation information was unavailable during the initial data loadIntegrations are not updated to include new locations during CI creation and updatesThere are no steps in the CMDB process to ensure that location information is updated on a regular basis Downstream Consequences Data Consequence Listing of servers by location will be inaccurateLocation-wise reporting would be incompleteUsers may use alternative methods such as including the location in the server names Operation Consequence Incident routing to appropriate location-based support team would take more timeService availability is affected due to improper failover server mappingChanges affecting the entire location will not have accurate affected CIs resulting in inaccurate impact analysisGeofencing solutions may become difficult to implement in case location information is not associated with Server App Consequence Management of discovery schedules and event management impact assessment are more difficult Impact on Your Business Accurately populated Server locations will positively affect IT operations, user experience, and management reporting Lower MTTR Service agents can correctly route incidents more frequently if the impact to a location is clearly available Incident Reduction Impact estimation will be more accurate if the affected servers involved in a location-based change are accurately identified User Experience CI lookups are easier if location information is available to filter Business Continuity Accurate Server locations result in accurate failover information Audit/Compliance Location-based patch deployments will be more complete and identification of their statuses will be quicker if Server location data is up to date Increase Operational Visibility Location-based Server reports will be easier and more accurate to create Engagement Questions: Consider the answers to these questions: Do you have servers across multiple locations?How are server CIs created and maintained in the CMDB (Discovery tool, integration, or manual upload)? Remediation Plays SummaryThe table below lists and summarizes each of the remediation plays in the playbook. Details are included later. Play Name Analyze Play What this play is about Find Server CI classes with unpopulated locations Required tasks Run fix script to identify target CI classes Fix Play What this play is about Understand the steps required to update location data Required tasks Identify CI and follow the steps to update the location data Data Governance What this play is about Prevent and monitor custom CMDB tables Required tasks Establish a review process and monitor regularly Play 1 - Analyze your CI records What this Play is about Identify Servers with unpopulated locations. Required tasks Option 1 : You have CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboards V 2.0.0 or higher Go to Navigator to "CMDB Data Foundations Dashboard"Inside the dashboard click on "Data Management Practices" tabReview the results for "Servers with Location" metric Option 2 : Use the report provided below, Upload this xml file, which will create a new report "Servers without location"Navigate to Reports > View/Run, click All, and then search for "Servers without location"Click the Servers without location report to see the class-wise distribution of such servers For additional analysis, you can change or add to the report's group-by criteria Play 2 – Fix Play: Update location What this Play is about You will identify and document the appropriate location for each of the Servers in the report generated from Play 1 Required tasks Identify and confirm the appropriate location of each ServerSelect any combination of the options below to populate the Server with "location" fields Update discovery schedule Navigate to Discovery > Discovery schedules and check if the servers are discovered via any of the discovery schedulesClick the white space in the Schedule's Location (location) field just right of the value "(empty)" to display the Location search modalEither enter the location name in the blank modal field or click the magnifying glass to display the list of locations and select oneClick the green check mark just to the right to save your selection After the next run of the discovery, verify that the location value is populated correctly for all Servers discovered through that schedule Manually update server CIs with the location Navigate to the report or to Configuration > Servers > All and update the filter with Location is empty Click the white space in the Server's Location (location) field just right of the value "(empty)" to display the Location search modalEither enter the location name in the blank modal field or click the magnifying glass to display the list of locations and select oneClick the green check mark just to the right to save your selection Using excel template update the location for server CIs Follow GetWell Knowledge Article KB0830072 to export servers records into an Excel spreadsheet template, modify the location attribute in the template, and then import the records back into your instance Data Governance What this Play is about This play explains how to prevent and monitor for Servers with unpopulated locations Required tasks Schedule the report from Play 1 to regularly monitor for Servers with unpopulated locationsEnsure that new discovery schedules are created location-wise and specified against the discovery schedule Congratulations You have completed this Get Well Playbook.