Service Mapping Configuration

This domain covers how you stand up application services and the maps that represent them, and how you steer the mapping process.

Top-down vs. bottom-up

Service Mapping is fundamentally a top-down discovery technique. You begin at the business-visible top of a service — its entry point — and discover downward through every CI the service depends on. This differs from bottom-up (horizontal) Discovery, which scans the network broadly and populates the CMDB without knowing which CIs belong to which service. Top-down produces a precise, service-scoped map; bottom-up produces a broad inventory. Service Mapping reuses the bottom-up patterns but drives them from the top.

Entry points

An entry point is the front door of an application service — the address from which mapping begins. Common entry point types include a URL/web endpoint, a host-and-port, or a load balancer virtual address. Entry point types are extensible: you can create entry point types when an application is reached in a way the out-of-the-box types do not cover. The entry point seeds the map; everything below it is discovered by following connection sections tier by tier.

Application services and service maps

The modern unit Service Mapping produces is the application service (the CSDM-aligned term; older releases called this a business service). An application service map is the visual, navigable graph of the entry point plus every discovered CI and relationship beneath it. You will see references to classic Service Mapping maps — the established top-down, pattern-driven mapping experience — which the exam still treats as core.

Ways to populate an application service:

• Pattern-based / top-down — define an entry point, discover downward. Most accurate, fully dependency-aware.
• Tag-based — populate the service from cloud or resource tags so that any CI carrying the matching tag is included. Strong fit for dynamic cloud workloads.
• Dynamic CI group — define a query; CIs matching the query are members and membership refreshes automatically.
• Manual — explicitly add CIs.

Traffic-based discovery as a configuration option

You can enable traffic-based discovery at two scopes: for a specific application service, or for CI types / specific CIs. When enabled, Service Mapping uses observed network traffic to find connections it could not otherwise parse. This is the configuration-side counterpart to the pattern-side connection-section tuning covered in Domain 1.

Steering and maintaining maps

• After the first discovery, review the map, then run scheduled rediscovery to keep it current.
• Use skip errors to let discovery continue past a failing node so you can map the rest and fix the failure later.
• Remove CIs that do not belong to the service to keep the map clean and the impact calculations accurate.

Fast-recall — Domain 2

• Service Mapping = top-down from an entry point; bottom-up Discovery = broad CMDB inventory.
• Entry point types: URL/web, host:port, load balancer; entry point types are extensible.
• Produces an application service (CSDM term) and an application service map.
• Populate by: top-down pattern, tag-based, dynamic CI group, or manual.
• Enable traffic-based discovery per service or per CI type/CI.
• Skip errors to continue; remove non-member CIs to keep maps accurate.