Summary
In order to migrate their on-premise infrastructure to AWS cloud, the client needed to transform their configuration management database (CMDB) and discovery to accommodate this hybrid model. The CMDB class structure needed normalization as it was carried over from the legacy CMDB system. The normalized CMDB model needed to align with ServiceNow out-of-the-box class structure for ease of adopting ServiceNow discovery and other supporting products.
Client Challenges
The company sought to retire data centers and migrate workload to AWS cloud, also to restructure existing critical business applications into a microservices model with cloud infrastructure (AWS). The existing CMDB data model was not aligned with most out-of-the-box CI classes and had no provisioning to accommodate hybrid infrastructure. This challenge impacted the company’s ability to support existing ITSM processes (e.g., Change, Incident, Release, etc.)
Another challenge was that because cloud resources are more elastic in nature, it was difficult to manage a transient load into CMDB. The company needed a solution to handle/filter an elastic load and build processes to manage and govern such data.
Finally, the team needed reports and integrations aligned with the new infrastructure and data model.
Stratacent's Solution
Stratacent created an end-to-end solution and helped customer learn to leverage their new CMDB data model and walked them through the path to data migration. Our consultants trained power users about how to best utilize this new model and spread awareness on ease of reporting and alignment towards out of the box functionalities.
We enabled the client to adopt ServiceNow discovery and other supporting products. We also leveraged ServiceNow cloud management plugin and ITOM platform to perform POC on connecting to AWS and fetching relevant data into CMDB to support ITSM processes starting from establishing a normalized CMDB data model.
The Stratacent team was able to implement a solution by first implementing new CMDB CI classes aligned with ServiceNow discovery and cloud management plugin. Many out-of-the-box processes populate data in avery granular format which helps with adoption of standard reports and dashboards. We were also able to implement a ServiceNow CMDB health dashboard as well by performing such normalization.
Our team also worked on understanding AWS workload/resources (EC2, S3, RDS CFT etc.) and using ServiceNow cloud management plugin and ITOM performed POC to ingest sample critical data into appropriate CMDB data model. This helped the organization understand how to align newer type of workloads with existing ITSM processes for their global operations and other teams for operational impact analysis. The Stratacent team also wrote custom discovery patterns for customer to adopt new technologies which were not part of the out of the box solution.
Technologies Used: AWS, ServiceNow CMDB, ServiceNow Cloud Management Plugin, ServiceNow ITOM
Results
Stratacent created an end-to-end solution by establishing a normalized CMDB data model, data conversion, newly populated CI classes to accommodate cloud infrastructure with integrations and established reports around existing processes and data sources.