Service Asset and Configuration Process Guidelines

General Guidelines

• Asset Management focuses on the financial aspect of a physical IT component throughout its entire lifecycle, while Configuration Management focuses on operational usage and logical relationships
• Assets records have corresponding CI records, and the asset record and the configuration item record are kept synchronized with business rules
• Asset Management for devices with an Operating System is required for external audit reporting and security incident response
• Configuration Management works hand in hand with Change Management. Change Management is the process that manages the CIs operationally.
• No Changes to CIs outlined in Configuration Management can take place without a Change record (excluding workstations or mobile devices).

Scope

Scope refers to the boundaries of what Assets and Configuration Items are included in the Service Asset and Configuration Management process at Emory.

Asset Management is the process of tracking IT assets across the whole life cycle, from the point of acquisition through disposal. The Scope of this process is desktops, laptops, and tablets for participating departments, but Asset Management is also available for other CI types.

The Scope of the Configuration Management process and system is framed by two prevailing principles:

1. A configuration item is an IT service asset that would normally fall under Change Management for configuration changes.
2. A configuration item is an IT service asset that can be versioned, providing a historical view of the configuration changes that have occurred.

NOT IN SCOPE AS CIs– Using these principles to determine the scope of the Configuration Management process, we establish that the following assets are NOT included. Though they may have CI records, they will not be tracked for changes:

• Desktops/Laptops/Tablets
• Accessories/Peripherals
• Smart Phones/Pagers
• Telephones
• Personal Printers

Asset Lifecycle

Assets can be managed within ServiceNow from the point of procurement to the point of destruction or disposal. Some important points in the lifecycle that the tool provides tracking for are as follows:

• Procurement and Purchase Order information
• Assigned User information
• Support Group of the Asset
• Warranty information
• Asset Status information (e.g. In Use, Retired, In Stock, Disposed, etc.)
• Certificate of Destruction information
• Depreciation tracking

Generic CIs

Generic CIs are actually asset categories that can be used when no specific Configuration Item exists. Whenever possible, the specific CI should be used instead of a generic CI.

Managed CI Types

CI types that are currently managed with the Configuration Management System (CMS) and controlled via Change Management:

• Business Services
• Technical Services
• Applications
• Network Gear (Switches, Routers, Wireless APs, etc.)
• Data Center - (Racks and Enclosures)
• Clusters
• Database (Database Instances and Databases)
• Storage Arrays and SAN Switches
• Servers - (Windows, UNIX, Linux, Solaris, ESX, etc.)
• Circuits
• Applications Servers - (Database Servers, Java Servers, Mail Servers, Web Servers, Directory Servers)
• UPS
• AWS Resources - (EC2, RDS, etc.)

Discovery

Discovery runs nightly from the ServiceNow mid-servers across all networks that have servers and network devices. When devices are detected, Discovery will attempt to match the device with an existing CI record, based first on Serial Number and secondarily on Name. Discovery may also relate some CIs to each other, such as Databases to the Servers they run on. Discovery currently works with the following CI types:

• Servers (Windows, Linux, and others)
• Network gear (Routers, Switches, and Firewalls, but not currently Wireless APs)
• Database Instances (and individual databases if permissions allow)
• Application Servers
• AWS Resources (EC2, RDS, etc.)
• Storage Volumes

Asset Integrations

• SCCM (out of box integration plug-in from ServiceNow)​
• JAMF​
• SAManage (ECAS)​
• SAManage (SOM)​
• ESP (Emory Security Portal from Nessus scans)​
• Clearpass (Wireless 'Emory Unplugged' only)