Assets vs CIs

What is the positives/negatives of listing an item as an Asset vs a configuration item? We currently have a pretty large asset application listing most of the devices as assets and software as CIs.  We are now discussing getting some server equipment added and wondered the best route to take.  Are there pros or cons to either way of adding them? We are also wanting to be able to utilize the API to manage them.  

Thanks!

Asked by Danee Gunka Schwartz on Mon 7/31/23 1:34 PM
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Answer (1)

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Mark Sayers Mon 7/31/23 1:47 PM

Hello Danee,

Generally speaking, it sort of goes down to the particular features of the assets or CI side of things that you need to utilize. If you are only generally going to be tracking a few things about the software, you could perhaps get away with using a CI, but if you need more of the features of assets like Product types/sub-types and vendors, then an asset might be the better way to go.

You can PATCH an asset via API, whereas you cannot PATCH a CI, so I don't know if that perhaps is any help at all in deciding which to use or not, but it might be good to know at least.

Sincerely,
Mark Sayers
Sr Support Consultant, CS

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Great thanks for this info! We are going to add them as Assets. The next question they have is what the pros/cons of using relationships verses adding the asset attribute to the CI form. I know with the latter we could run reports. Is reporting an option with relationships or just the mapping function. - Danee Gunka Schwartz Tue 8/1/23 1:19 PM
Relationships allow you to specify *how* assets relate to each other or other CIs. A custom asset field doesn't really give you flexibility to keep adding more asset relationships to said CI without having to do a lot of editing where a new relationship is just a couple of clicks. - Mark Sayers Tue 8/1/23 1:45 PM