“We can trust
`our CMDB now”
`
`This ServiceNow case study is based on a conversation with Nathan Gee, Kimberly-Clark senior analyst.
`
`Discovering Discovery
`
`ServiceNow Discovery gathers configuration, provisioning, and status from computers
`and devices on the enterprise network and updates the configuration management
`database (CMDB) accordingly. Discovery also finds software running on the device and
`identifies any TCP connections and relationships among computer systems, such as an
`application on one server that uses a database on another server.
`
`Discovery uses one or more special server processes called MID servers (for monitoring,
`integration, and discovery) on each enterprise network. A MID server is a lightweight Java
`process that can run on a Linux, Unix or Windows server. Its job during discovery is to
`execute probes and return the results to the ServiceNow instance for processing; it does
`not retain any information.
`
`Discovery is agent-less, meaning that it does not require the installation of software on
`any computer or device to be discovered. The MID server uses several techniques to
`probe devices without using agents.
`
`How does Kimberly-Clark use ServiceNow Discovery?
`My name is Nathan Gee and I’m a senior analyst with Kimberly-Clark. We have been
`using ServiceNow since January 2010.
`
`The ServiceNow Discovery application has been highly effective for us. I know there
`are a lot of discovery tools out there, and that some organizations may be reluctant to
`introduce yet another one. For us, security was a concern in the beginning, but since
`there are no agents to install or real impact to the device being scanned, it was just a
`matter of showing users the benefit of having accurate data.
`
`With additional tools for discovery in other areas – say, network discovery – you might
`get more raw data to use later, but the integration with ServiceNow was most important
`for us. Our priority was just to get an accurate CMDB. With the tight integration,
`ServiceNow Discovery finds all of our hardware and installed software, so we know that
`it’s more likely to be accurate than a system that relies on manual updates. We can
`trust our CMDB now.
`
`Easy customization and a broad view
`Discovery runs right out of the box. There are a handful of commands available if you
`want to add functions later. The way discovery is built into ServiceNow, it’s been very
`straightforward to make the necessary changes. Some commands require root-level or
`sudo access to the machine, and this is well documented in the ServiceNow wiki. The only
`technical hurdle was on the UNIX/Linux side, where we needed a little more handholding.
`
`Making Waves
`Discovering configuration items
`and relationships throughout
`the enterprise.
`
`Organization
`Kimberly-Clark
`
`Business
`Consumer goods
`
`Headquarters
`Dallas, Texas, USA
`
`Geographies
`Worldwide
`
`Modern ITSM Software
`Discovery
`CMDB
`
`Implementation Timeline
`Approximately 3-4 months
`
`www.servicenow.com
`
`Case Study
`
`1
`
`

`
`“The average home
`page generates
`more traffic than
`a ServiceNow
`discovery scan.”
`
`Now we have a team of five whose day-
`to-day duties include discovery in addition
`to the support of other applications. It’s a
`less hands-on process for us to maintain
`the CMDB, and that allows us to put
`more effort into maintaining any manual
`relationships among the configuration
`instances (CIs), which we couldn’t often
`do before.
`
`I glance at the schedules every day
`to make sure that the jobs have run
`successfully. But there’s no day-to-day
`care to speak of; the lights stay on. Now
`that we’ve implemented discovery, I’ve
`been able to put most of my time into
`developing it for our needs and growth.
`Even the MID servers upgrade themselves
`when there’s a new version.
`
`Our future in discovery
`In the long-run, we plan to add more
`probes and continue to modify discovery
`to help us on a day-to-day basis. We
`want to keep wiring up more relationships
`to get as much out of discovery as the
`business needs.
`
`Discovering Discovery
`
`Out of the box, ServiceNow offers Internet
`Authentication Service (IAS) discovery,
`the creation of websites underneath that
`and the relationship to the instance. The
`relationships alone are of tremendous
`benefit, especially in the context of the
`business service map views. With tools
`we’ve used in the past, we could see
`which boxes were in production and
`we knew they were critical. But until we
`saw them mapped out in ServiceNow –
`almost like a Visio diagram – with all of
`the relationships to other devices, we
`didn’t realize how hard it was to focus on
`the entire environment. Because of our
`architecture, we’ve gone as far as writing
`SQL probes to work with our environment,
`then we’re building relationships to all the
`SQL catalogs as well. It’s not hard to make
`changes like those.
`
`Scanning the globe
`with fewer resources
`We have close to a dozen MID servers
`around the globe. Depending on the
`region, we run discovery every evening on
`about 850,000 CIs and across nearly 1.5
`million IP addresses a day. Our scheduled
`scans take from one to three hours,
`depending on the size of the subnet and
`the device count. The average home page
`generates more traffic than a ServiceNow
`Discovery scan.
`
`Strictly from the technical side, it took two
`people for us to implement discovery:
`another person and me. I was the lead for
`discovery and for implementing it in the
`go-live. It took us three or four months
`from the start of testing until we were
`running full production scans.
`
`www.servicenow.com
`
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`
`SN-CS-102012
`
`Case Study
`
`2