imagine this you are involved with acme corp who have implemented servicenow products very successfully over the past year now they want to strengthen that success by creating more transparency for the anti-organization you probably guessed it right the next milestone in the roadmap servicenow discovery and you have been tasked to investigate the implementation strategy planning for servicenow discovery can be a challenging task unless you know how that is why today we are having a look at the various considerations when planning for success [Music] i always like to start with a slight refresh you may have seen our previous video where we discussed the values and benefits of servicenow discovery link in the description if you haven't let me quickly reiterate why companies and public administrations invested time and money into servicenow discovery there are basically two main reasons the first reason you want insights into your it infrastructure you want to accurately track every device that your organization operates keep the scale in mind we are speaking of potentially thousands of devices from on-premise servers and data centers to virtual machines in various public clouds or simple end user workstations with discovery you have better data quality simply because automation by its very nature brings standardization and consolidation plus it's easier to manage and scale the second reason you want that operational data be kept up to date in the most efficient way so what better way than to automate this right discovery allows for better overall awareness of operations hence leading to reduced risk and reduced cost you are convinced good so where to get started what do we need to consider before heading for discovery to address the strategy let us split the discussion up into three pillars people process and technology whatever project we are working on we always need to consider everyone involved management and project sponsors developers and administrators supporting subject matter experts and end users maybe also vendors and your customers establishing an effective communication strategy is your greatest tool to keep everyone involved well informed and if necessary on their toes keep in mind servicenow discovery is not a small point product solution in most cases it is far-reaching spanning across multiple departments within the organization and often requiring access to all parts of the network do not underestimate implementations that need to cover multiple geographical locations working together is the ultimate key for success fortunately most servicenow customers are well aware of this and they have the necessary governance however if this is not the case then the next pillar should certainly help you at this point i also would like to mention that servicenow's implementation partners have access to the now create framework featuring the necessary outlines for a good communication approach in a project like this processes are the routines that drive your productivity and does your business nowadays there are plenty of standardized processes servicenow discovery is not a process per se but it typically builds on top of the itil configuration management process if you are not aware the scope of configuration management is the governance of all configuration items and their relationships that make up the it environment the servicenow configuration management process specifically encompasses the definition thus of cmdb classes and attributes data sources such as discovery or other the actual cmdb governance including functional roles and responsibilities as well as interactions with other processes such as change management speaking about change management another itil process it is key for maintaining a successful configuration management process unfortunately it is often very much underestimated or even forgotten about i might need to cover this in another video so make sure to subscribe but put simple change management is supposed to govern the data management of your cmdb keeping it as accurate as possible by involving the accountable and responsible stakeholders of the organization coming to back to the topic at hand it becomes very clear that if the underlying processes are not outlined so that you have the necessary people involved at each step along the way it should be the very first order of business before considering discovery consequently if discovery is implemented without a process to utilize it certainly does its job from a technical point of view however you run the risk that your cmdb will become outdated and cluttered very fast losing all its value to the organization that is technology is the tools people use to drive their routines aka processes these tools are becoming more and more standardized and thus interconnected this also means that already when choosing between technologies we have to consider some dependencies if you only consider dependencies and limitations during an implementation you're likely to encounter some bad surprises so let's have a closer look at an organization's technological landscape and how we can leverage the different technologies of servicenow's discovery solution the cloud or to be more precise the hybrid cloud model is here to stay and takes an even bigger role in the strategy of it organizations with each passing year with that growing demand there is also the need to manage all these resources servicenow discovery allows for cloud inventory of the most common cloud service providers on the market simply by connecting to the available apis there are a few things that are important to know about though the list of supported cloud service providers and supported features for each can change with every release i definitely recommend you to head over to servicenow docs and read about your current as well as future releases on-premise virtualization environments such as citrix vcenter can also be considered a cloud service provider their resources are discovered through apis last but not least cloud inventory does not return os level information meaning the configuration of the host system running on the virtual machine instance will not be read we are not writing anything into the cmdbci computer class hierarchy or its related classes that is why we need the other discovery technologies cloud inventory specifically is capturing the resources the organization owns within the csps environment we want to populate the cmdb with things such as logical data centers virtual networks cloud containers whatever we have in that environment at the same time we want to gain insights into what is online and consuming uptime cloud inventory is just the very first step towards cloud management and its governing processes agentless discovery also often referred to as ip-based horizontal or traditional discovery requires the deployment of a mid-server application allowing the communication between your servicenow instance in the cloud and the resources in your internal network the mitsub application in your network securely communicates with your instance using https protocol well noting that for security reasons it is always the mid-server application initiating communication this means it is always the mid-server application asking your instance in the cloud for tasks it needs to perform next on the local environment when for example in our case a discovery instruction is received the mid-server application will communicate with the internal resource on your network using protocols such as wmi ssh snmp just to name the most common ones this means the mid-server application sends a command to another resource on the network providing the proper accesses are given the resource will reply to that command the received information will then be sent back to the instance for processing without digressing further into the technicalities of this topic you can probably now already observe what is important for you to consider first and foremost you need to be aligned with security teams they need to be on board right from the start otherwise they might see the solution as too intrusive and outright refuse it don't worry though alex has you covered and has already done a video on this check it out i will link it in description next you need an overview of the network so work together with the network team they should be able to provide you with everything that you need to get started like ip ranges vlans a topological map of the network and a good understanding of technical dependencies such as firewalls the goal is simple you want to be able to design your discovery schedule and place your mid servers properly keep in mind though timing is important broadcasting through a network may have an impact on network performance plan accordingly performance and redundancy requirements towards the mid servers they depend entirely on the scale of your discovery implementation consider also special cases such as dmz high security environments or even requirements towards certifications and regulations it may be that you cannot use agentless discovery for example for core banking environments in the financial sector they are usually heavily regulated and the use of ip-based discovery might be considered too intrusive that is also why since the year service now offers now agent-based discovery with the agent client collector agent client collector short acc as the name suggests a lightweight application that can be deployed on devices to collect information interesting enough the agent does not communicate with the instance directly it requires accessible mid servers to send information back to the instance have a look at my hands-on video to get a better understanding nevertheless you should consider the following when evaluating agent-based discovery an agent for example cannot be deployed on all devices there is a list of supported operating systems meaning devices such as appliances or network equipment cannot be discovered using this technology if the discover devices to be discovered with an agent-based technology are windows hosts and you have microsoft sccm while an integration with latter one may just be simpler the servicenow agent client collector is very interesting to consider if you want to use it to monitor the devices using servicenow's event management or orchestrator however the agent does currently not support service mapping it's not using patterns the heart and soul of service mapping at this point in time it's unclear how this will be solved so it will be very interesting to follow upcoming announcements the agent-based discovery is currently still pretty new to all of us only time can tell how well this technology will be adopted my personal opinion i love it yes it's still rough around the edges like any newly introduced feature nevertheless the agent client collector framework has a solid underlying architecture that is both scalable and reliable reliable when set up whatever you end up doing we can agree that it is always good to have a plan and as many insights into the environment as possible beforehand with this video you now have the foundational considerations to be made for your discovery implementation to be a success that said do not hesitate to reach out to us if you need assistance we have done this plenty of times also head over to our newly launched research website we regularly publish new content such as benchmarks web white papers infographics and much more the engines of our new research unit have been fired up the team is eager to provide you with their insights into item and ai up spaces so what are you waiting for and also while you are at it hit like on this video the subscribe button for more see you next time [Music] you