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Relationships

Cloudaware employs standard ITIL-inspired relationships to model ownership hierarchies and runtime dependencies across assets. Relationships link CMDB objects into a graph for topology, impact analysis, and reporting.

Key Relationship Types​

  • Uses/Hosted on:
    • Often represented as lookup or master‑detail (for example, Instance → Account, Volume → Account).
  • Depends on/Supports:
    • Represented as lookups or many‑to‑many junction objects (for example, Instance ↔ Volume).
  • Connected to:
    • Network and service connectivity, often via link objects that reference both ends.

On the platform, these are implemented as:

  • Master‑detail relationships where child records inherit ownership and security from the parent and are deleted with it.
  • Lookup relationships where child and parent can exist independently.
  • Junction objects with two master‑detail fields for many‑to‑many associations.

Common Patterns​

  • Compute → Volume, Network Interface, Security Group:
    • Instances/VMs link to volumes/disks, NICs, and security groups via lookups and junctions.
  • App/Service → Compute, Database, Queue/Topic:
    • Applications or services link to the infrastructure components they run on or consume.
  • Account/Subscription → Regional resources:
    • Accounts/subscriptions own regional resources such as instances, storage, and networking objects.

Visualization​

Instead of topology views, Cloudaware CMDB focuses on relationship mapping – through tables and tree‑style relationship views – to:

  • Show ownership hierarchies (account → region → resource).
  • Highlight upstream/downstream dependencies for impact analysis.
  • Distinguish relationship types through consistent icons and edge types.

Integrity & Drift​

  • Relationship integrity is maintained by:
    • Periodic collectors that refresh links from providers and tools.
    • Normalization rules that align IDs and container relationships.
  • Drift handling:
    • Detecting missing or broken links (orphans) when a child exists without a valid parent.
    • Providing remediation views to reattach or clean up orphaned records.

For concrete relationship fields and junction objects, see: