Understand Service Maps

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Understand Service Maps

    Service maps provide visibility into active alerts for Configuration Items (CIs) and their interdependencies, enabling users to identify the source of alerts and take necessary remediation actions. This feature is accessible for all application services and reflects real-time changes as service map definitions evolve.

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    Key Features

    • Visual representation of alerts linked to impacted CIs and their relationships.
    • Enhanced visibility from the Quebec release, allowing identification of entry point problems bound to alerts.
    • Icons represent different CI types, including applications, physical and virtual servers, network devices, and more.
    • Color-coded alerts indicate severity levels: Critical (red), Major (orange), Minor (yellow), Warning (blue), OK (green), and No alerts (no color).
    • Service maps can be accessed through the Application Services list and Monitored Services list.

    Key Outcomes

    By utilizing service maps, ServiceNow customers can quickly assess the health of their application services, understand the implications of alerts, and prioritize remediation efforts based on the severity of issues displayed. This facilitates proactive management of IT infrastructure and improves overall service reliability.

    Service maps show active alerts for CIs and the relationships between 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.

    About Service Maps

    A service map shows alerts with impacted CIs and CI interdependencies. For example, changes to a connection between a host and hypervisor appear on the service map. As service map definitions change, the service map, alert, and impact information updates accordingly. From the Quebec release, there is enhanced visibility. When the alert is bound to the entry point, the service map identifies an entry point problem.
    Note:
    Alerts will not be displayed for the entry points on the service map.

    You can open a service map from these places:

    • From the Application services list, you can view service maps for application services.
    • From the Monitored services list, you can view service maps for monitored services.

    The following icons are used in service maps. The icon shapes are slightly different for application services.

    Table 1. Service map icons
    Icon Description
    (Application server icon.) Represents applications such as Microsoft IIS or SQL servers.
    (Call server icon.) Represents physical and VM computers and servers.
    (Entry point icon.) Represents the network starting point. For example, Layer 3 devices appear toward the top of the map, and connected software and services appear near the end of the map.
    (Redundancy box icon.) Shows the number of redundant CIs.
    (Load balancer icon.) Shows the workload between machines.

    (Gray connector icon.)

    		 The gray connector shows a relationship between CIs.
    (CI with no active alerts box icon.) Each CI with no active alerts box represents a network CI. A gray box represents a CI with no active alerts. Information about the CI is hidden.
    (Redundancy box icon.) Hides multiple CIs that are designated as redundant.

    (Box with orange severity color icon.)

    		 An impacted CI displays the color that represents the severity of the alert associated with the CI.
    • Critical (red): Immediate action is required. The resource is either not functional or critical problems are imminent.
    • Major (orange): Major functionality is severely impaired or performance has degraded.
    • Minor (yellow): Partial, non-critical loss of functionality or performance degradation occurred.
    • Warning (blue): Attention is required, even though the resource is still functional.
    • OK (green): An alert is created. The resource is still functional.
    • No color: No active alerts.
    (Storage icon.) Represents a fiber channel, hard drives, or other data storage devices.
    (Web server icon.) Represents related web services for the network such as NGINX or JBoss web server.
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