Integrating with ServiceNow

You can integrate IBM Z Resource Discovery with ServiceNow.

With IBM Z Resource Discovery you can automate the manual discovery process and accurately map relationships between IBM Z and ServiceNow. There are 27 common Configuration Items (CIs) such as Sysplex, LPAR, z/OS, Db2 subsystem, IMS subsystem, CICS subsystem, IBM MQ subsystem, and more supported in the integration.

ServiceNow components
IBM Z Discovery Agent:
  • On each z/OS, the Discovery Library adapter collects runtime and configuration information from the z/OS and actively running subsystems. The collected information is stored in files called IdML books on the file system.
  • Within a Sysplex, on one or more z/OS (that allows JCL Scanner to access the required JCL files), the JCL Scanner will read and parse a list of JCLs on the file system.
  • The IBM Z Discovery Agent is a job that can be used to push the IdML books or the JCL to the IBM Z Discovery Server periodically.
IBM Z Discovery Server:
  • On a Linux® on z or Linux on x system, after receiving data from one or more IBM Z Discovery Agent, the Server will extract, transform, and load the data into a database and the Kafka broker.
ServiceNow:
  • Within ServiceNow (running on the ServiceNow Cloud), a certified app pulls the data from the Kafka broker through the REST API Interface, transforms the data, and ingests into ServiceNow CMDB tables.
  • In ServiceNow software, Mid Server acts as a proxy server that allows ServiceNow in the cloud to access the IBM Z Discovery Server within the intranet.

Getting started with ServiceNow integration

To integrate IBM Z Resource Discovery with ServiceNow Change Management Database, you must install all the following components:
  1. IBM Z Discovery from ServiceNow Store (plug-in) (ServiceNow Platform).
  2. IBM Z Resource Discovery - Data Service (Linux system and z/OS system), which includes:
    1. IBM Z Discovery Server, which is a set of Open Container Images to be installed on Linux on z or Linux on x.
    2. IBM Z Discovery Agent, which is a Java program to be installed on the Unix System Service of z/OS.
  3. IBM Z Operations Analytics Common─which contains common utilities that deploy and manage the container images provided by the IBM Z Resource Discovery - Data Service and Kafka Message Broker.
  4. IBM Discovery Library adapter for z/OS V3.2.0 (z/OS system).