AWS application ELB Service discovery with Patterns

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
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    Summary of AWS Application ELB Service Discovery with Patterns

    The AWS Application ELB Service Discovery pattern enables users to visualize all load balancers in their environment through a map, facilitating enhanced management of application traffic. Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) supports the distribution of incoming traffic across multiple targets and is optimized for high performance with TLS offloading and centralized certificate deployment.

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    Key Features

    • Supports top-down discovery, with the entry point as HTTP(s) Endpoint and outgoing relations to Amazon EC2 instances.
    • Utilizes ultra-high performance capabilities, supporting UDP and static IP addresses.
    • Compatible with ServiceNow AI Platform and Amazon Commercial Cloud Services (C2S) for discovery and cloud governance.

    Prerequisites

    • Conduct a horizontal discovery using Cloud API (CAPI) as this pattern only supports top-down discovery.
    • Ensure the load balancer data is stored in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and create an application service for each load balancer.
    • Set read-only permissions for specified REST APIs to facilitate data retrieval from AWS services.
    • Download the Discovery and Service Mapping Patterns from the ServiceNow Store and verify the MID Server installation meets system requirements.

    Data Collected by Discovery

    The discovery process gathers data into the following tables:

    • Load Balancer Services [cmdbcilbservice] - Contains details such as:
      • Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN): The DNS name of the load balancer.
      • Name: The load balancer name formatted as :.
      • Serial Number: Identifies the load balancer with the format ##ObjectID=.
      • Port: The operational port of the load balancer.
      • Object ID: Unique identifier for the load balancer.
      • IP Address: The IP address corresponding to the FQDN.

    Next Steps

    To implement this service discovery pattern, ensure you have the required permissions and data configurations in place. For further details on testing AWS REST APIs, refer to the relevant articles in the Now Support Knowledge Base.

    Discovery uses the Amazon AWS application ELB Service discovery pattern to show all load balancers in your environment in a map.

    Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets.

    The Amazon AWS application ELB Service discovery pattern supports top-down discovery. This pattern discovers all load balancers with these characteristics:
    • Use ultra-high performance, TLS offloading at scale, and centralized certificate deployment
    • Support UDP and static IP addresses for your application

    For top-down discovery, the entry point is HTTP(s) Endpoint. Outgoing relations are to Amazon EC2 instances.

    The ServiceNow AI Platform supports Amazon Commercial Cloud Services (C2S) for discovery and cloud governance. C2S is the government program that brings AWS into the Intelligence Community.

    You can use this pattern on the ServiceNow platform using Kingston or later releases.

    Visit the ServiceNow Store to view all the available apps, and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.

    Prerequisites

    • Run a horizontal discovery, using Cloud API (CAPI). This is necessary because this discovery pattern supports top-down discovery only. For Cloud Discovery, you can run the horizontal discovery as usual.
    • When the load balancers data has been stored in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), create an application service for each load balancer.
    • Set read-only permissions for these REST APIs:
      • https://elasticloadbalancing.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/?Action=DescribeLoadBalancers&LoadBalancerArns.member.1=<LB_ARN>&Version=2015-12-01
      • https://elasticloadbalancing.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/?Action=DescribeLoadBalancers&Version=2015-12-01
      • https://elasticloadbalancing.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/?Action=DescribeListeners&LoadBalancerArn=<LB_ARN>&Version=2015-12-01
      • https://elasticloadbalancing.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/?Action=DescribeRules&ListenerArn=<LISTENER_ARN>&Version=2015-12-01
      • https://elasticloadbalancing.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/?Action=DescribeTargetHealth&TargetGroupArn=<TARGET_GROUP_ARN>&Version=2015-12-01
      • https://ec2.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/?Action=DescribeInstances&Version=2016-11-15&Filter.1.Name=instance-state-name&Filter.1.Value=running&Filter.2.Name=instance-id&Filter.2.Value=<INSTANCE_ID>
    • For Cloud Discovery, download the Discovery and Service Mapping Patterns from the ServiceNow Store.
    • When installing the MID Server, ensure that the host machine meets or exceeds the MID Server system requirements published on the ServiceNow documentation site.

    Verify the REST API Permissions

    Download the Cloud Discovery patterns spreadsheet so you can grant user permissions required for running the Discovery patterns. In addition to permissions, the spreadsheet also includes useful information such as pattern names, types, CI Classes, and links to vendor documentation. New patterns are available quarterly, so check periodically to be sure you have the latest version of the spreadsheet.

    Note:
    You can test the AWS REST APIs using Postman API platform. For more information, see the How to test AWS REST API using POSTMAN [KB0782183] article in the Now Support Knowledge Base.

    Data collected by Discovery during horizontal discovery

    The discovered data includes the following tables and fields.

    Table and field Description
    Load Balancer Services [cmdb_ci_lb_service]
    Fully qualified domain name [fqdn] Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of the load balancer. The DNS name.
    Name [name] Name of the load balancer, in the following format: <LB name>:<LB port>.
    Serial Number [serial_number] Serial number of the load balancer, in the following format: ##Object_ID=<LB_ARN>.
    Port [port] Port of the load balancer.
    Object ID [object_id] Unique identifier of the load balancer.
    IP Address [ip_address] IP address of the FQDN.