About application services in ITOM AIOps application services
Learn about application services ITOM AIOps so that you can optimize, deploy, and manage them.
ITOM AIOps application services
- Internal - such as an organization email system
- customer-facing - such as an organization website
- Instance in a development environment - an instance of a business application or system.
ServiceNow applications refer to devices and applications that comprise an application service as configuration items (CIs).
The various CIs and the relationships between them, that comprise an application service, are stored in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB).
Each application service contains an entry point as the top-level CI. An entry point is a point where customers can access an application service. Typically, it’s a URL, or a combination of the IP address and port for an application service in enterprise deployments. For cloud-based deployments, an entry point can be a URL to a cloud resource like an AWS gateway.
- PS Apache03: An Apache web server that hosts a company website.
- PS LinuxApp01 and PS LinuxApp02: Two Linux servers that share the workload from the web server.
- PS ORA01: A database server that both Linux servers must access.
- Storage Area Network 001: A mass storage device on which the other CIs depend.
To view service maps like this on the Service Operations Workspace dashboard and what an application service looks like when an alert is associated with a CI, see View unified service map and the impact paths in Service Operations Workspace.
Types of application services
- Discovered service - an application service that the Service Mapping application finds (if your organization uses Service Mapping). Service Mapping discovers application services using patterns and by following traffic connections.
- Dynamic CI groups, which act as application services.
- Tag-based application services - Service Mapping can create application services based on these tags.
- Manual service - an application service that your administrator configures by selecting and adding each CI and specifying the relationships between CIs.
- Dynamic application service - includes only CIs that are part of CI relationships stored in the CMDB.
Alert impact
Application services are critical to the operations of your organization. If an issue occurs on one CI, the entire application service can be affected. Part of your role as an AIOps operator is to analyze alerts on CIs and see how they impact the application service as a whole and then remediate or solve the underlying issue. Your administrator can configure the impact rules that go into the calculations for the severity of an alert.
Use the Service Operations Workspace dashboard to view the impact tree for an application service and understand the relationship between the severity of an alert and the overall application service. As shown in the following figure, the service map shows active alerts for CIs and the relationships between the CIs. By viewing this information, you can better understand the source of alerts and take remediation steps. The service map is available for all application services. For more information, see View the impact tree.
Application services and CSDM
You can create an application service to adhere to the Common Service Data Model (CSDM) standards and to standardize the organization, maintenance, and monitoring of services. CSDM helps you streamline service types and service offerings. You can add relationships between application services and other service-related objects in the CSDM: Business Application, Technical Service Offerings, or Business Service Offerings. For more information, see Applying the CSDM guidelines to ITOM AIOps.
Related applications and DPM
Digital Portfolio Management (DPM) enables you to use related applications to view and edit service details in the plan-build-run life cycle. All related applications are optional, so they aren't required to use the DPM experience. For more information, see .