Data Foundations (CMDB and CSDM) flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Configuration Item (CI)

Any component that must be managed to deliver a service, including hardware, software, facilities, documentation, people, or a service itself.

CMDB

A repository of configuration records and the relationships among them, supporting impact analysis, incident resolution, and change planning.

CI class

A category in the CMDB class hierarchy that defines which attributes and relationships a CI record can have, such as server or database.

Reconciliation

The process of merging or de-duplicating CI records from multiple data sources into one authoritative record in the CMDB.

Identification

The discovery or creation activity that detects components and creates CI records for them in the CMDB.

Configuration Management System

The broader set of tools, data sources, and processes that produce, federate, and consume CMDB data across the organization.

Configuration control

The process ensuring changes to CIs go through change management so unauthorized modifications are prevented or detected.

Status accounting

Tracking the lifecycle state of each CI, such as ordered, installed, in stock, in maintenance, or retired.

Configuration audit

Verification activity comparing recorded CI data against actual discovered state and reporting discrepancies for correction.

Definitive Media Library

A controlled store of authorized software versions and media referenced by CIs, preventing unlicensed or unauthorized deployments.

CSDM

A prescriptive standardized data model on the ServiceNow platform defining how services, products, and their relationships are represented.

CSDM Foundation layer

The base layer covering company, business units, locations, users, groups, and the basic CI and asset data model.

CSDM Crawl layer

The layer introducing business services, service offerings, and technical services, forming the minimum viable service-aware model.

CSDM Walk layer

The layer adding application services and service instances on top of the Crawl layer for deeper service modeling.

CSDM Run layer

The layer adding full service-level and product-level modeling, enabling mature service and portfolio reporting.

CSDM Fly layer

The most mature layer, modeling the full portfolio including product models, service commitments, and business capability alignment.

CSDM Foundation domain

The domain holding company, business unit, location, user, group, and the CMDB class hierarchy for hardware and software.

CSDM Design domain

The domain modeling business services, service offerings, and their technical underpinnings such as application and technical services.

CSDM Sell/Consume domain

The domain covering service catalog items, request items, and the offerings presented to service consumers.

CSDM Manage Technology domain

The domain covering infrastructure CIs such as servers, databases, and network devices along with their relationships.

CSDM Manage Services domain

The domain covering the operational service view used for incident, problem, and change impact analysis.

Authoritative source

The single designated system of record for a CI class or attribute, into which other data sources are reconciled.

CI data stewardship

The role accountable for the quality, completeness, and correctness of CI records within an assigned class or domain.

CI completeness metric

The percentage of CI records with all required fields populated, used as a primary CMDB health indicator.

CI retirement

Marking a CI as retired rather than deleting it, preserving historical relationships and audit trails for reporting.

CI relationship

A record linking a parent CI and a child CI with a relationship type such as depends on, runs on, or hosted on.

Service mapping

A top-down discovery technique tracing application traffic from entry points to underlying infrastructure to build service topology.

Impact analysis

Using the CI relationship graph to determine which services and components are affected by a change or outage.

Orphan CI

A CI record with no modeled relationships, which degrades impact analysis and indicates incomplete relationship modeling.

Relationship completeness

The percentage of CIs that have at least one modeled relationship, indicating the health of the relationship graph.

CMDB health KPIs

Metrics such as CI completeness, relationship completeness, duplicate rate, audit discrepancy rate, and discovery coverage used to measure CMDB quality.

Value realization reporting

Tying CMDB and CSDM metrics to business outcomes such as reduced MTTR, fewer unauthorized changes, and lower license spend.