Hardware life cycle
Summarize
Summary of Hardware life cycle
The ServiceNow Common Service Data Model (CSDM) framework provides standardized fields and values to track the life cycle of hardware assets and Configuration Items (CIs). These hardware life-cycle states represent the overall progression of physical hardware assets, such as servers, monitors, and keyboards, as related to their associated products. The life cycle tracking uses paired values oflife cycle stageandlife cycle stage statusto define the phase and specific status of a hardware CI throughout its existence, from procurement to end of life.
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Key Features
- Life cycle stage: Broad phases a hardware CI moves through, including inception/procurement, operation, and end of life.
- Life cycle stage status: Specific status within a given stage, for example, a CI in the Operational stage could be "In Use," "In Maintenance," or "End of Support."
- Stages and statuses are visible exclusively in hardware-related tables within Asset Management and the CMDB.
- The
lifecyclecontroltable governs available status values per CI type (hardware, logical, document, etc.), ensuring stage and status values are appropriate for the CI category. - A comprehensive list of CMDB hardware tables (e.g.,
cmdbcicomputer,cmdbcihardware,cmdbciipdevice) supports holistic hardware life cycle management across varied hardware classes.
Managing Hardware Life Cycle in Relation to Service Instances
Service instances represent logical groupings of underlying hardware and software CIs that implement business applications or systems. These service instances use logical life-cycle value pairs, whereas hardware CIs use physical life-cycle value pairs. The hardware CIs supporting a service instance maintain their own life cycles but have dependencies mapped through the service instance.
- Hardware CI not retired when service instance retires: Hardware may remain active or idle after the retirement of a service instance until reassigned.
- Shared hardware CI among multiple service instances: For example, a single physical host running a database service might support multiple service instances. Retiring one service instance does not retire the shared hardware or the service itself because other instances depend on it.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Enables precise tracking and management of hardware asset life cycles to improve asset utilization and lifecycle planning.
- Supports clear differentiation between logical service lifecycles and physical hardware lifecycles, aiding accurate impact analysis and dependency management.
- Facilitates compliance with organizational standards by applying standardized life cycle stages and statuses within the CMDB and Asset Management modules.
- Helps avoid premature retirement or mismanagement of shared hardware resources across multiple service instances.
The CSDM framework provides standard fields and values that you can use to track the life cycle of an asset or a CI. The hardware life-cycle states represent the overall life cycle of hardware assets and CIs as related to their products.
Life-cycle values for hardware
Hardware assets are physical items that are stocked, for example servers, monitors, and keyboards. A life-cycle value pair is the combination life cycle stage and life cycle stage status values for a CI, asset, or IBI over the life cycle of a product instance. The stages and statuses for the hardware life-cycle process are visible only in hardware-related tables in Asset Management and the CMDB.
- A life cycle stage is one of the broad phases that a CI moves through, from inception or procurement to operation and then to end of life.
- life cycle stage status is the particular status of a CI within its current life cycle stage.
For additional information on how you can benefit from implementing life-cycle value pairs for CMDB entities, see the 'Map existing status values to CSDM life-cycle value pairs' section in the 'Foundation domain' topic.
Holistic life cycle: CMDB hardware tables (from cmdb_ci)
| CMDB hardware tables | CMDB hardware table name |
|---|---|
| Accessory | cmdb_ci_acc |
| Communication Device | cmdb_ci_comm |
| Computer Peripheral | cmdb_ci_peripheral |
| Computer Room AC | cmdb_ci_crac |
| Display Hardware | cmdb_ci_display_hardware |
| Facility Hardware | cmdb_ci_facility_hardware |
| Hardware | cmdb_ci_hardware |
| Imaging Hardware | cmdb_ci_imaging_hardware |
| IP Device | cmdb_ci_ip_device |
| Monitoring Equipment | cmdb_ci_monitoring_hardware |
| Network Adaptor | cmdb_ci_network_adaptor |
| Printing Hardware | cmdb_ci_printing_hardware |
| Rack | cmdb_ci_rack |
| Storage Device | cmdb_ci_storage_device |
Example hardware classes
View attributes, identification rule, and other important schema structures for the CMDB Computer [cmdb_ci_computer] class. See Hardware [cmdb_ci_hardware] class.
How retiring a service instance might affect a hardware CI
A service instance is the logical representation of the underlying hardware and software CIs that work together to implement a business application or system. The service instance represents an instance of the business application or system.
Hardware and software CIs are managed using the physical life-cycle value pairs. Because a service instance is a logical representation, it is managed as using the logical life-cycle value pairs. The physical hardware CIs that are part of the service map under a service instance have their own life cycle, but they are related through the service instance as a specific set of dependencies or decomposition.
- Example 1: A hardware CI is not retired when the service instance is retired
When a service instance is retired, the associated hardware might not be retired. For example, the hardware might remain idle, unrelated to any service instance, until it is reallocated for use by a different service instance.
- Example 2: A hardware CI is shared by multiple service instances
In the common scenario of a shared database, multiple service instances (each with a unique database schema) share a single database service. The database service runs on a single physical host.
When one of the service instances is retired, the database service and host cannot be retired. All other service instances still depend on the database service that is running on the host.
See Monitor the health of application services on the Application Services dashboard.