SNOW-CSA Database Administration and CMDB Practice Question
A company uses ServiceNow CMDB and wants to ensure that CI attribute updates from a discovery tool are not overwritten by manual changes made by administrators. Which configuration best achieves this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse the 'Preserve manual changes' setting with the 'Ignore changes' flag or assume that disabling reconciliation is the only way to stop overwrites, when in fact the setting is a granular, attribute-level protection mechanism built into the CMDB CI Class Manager.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Configure the 'Preserve manual changes' setting in the CMDB CI Class Manager.
The 'Preserve manual changes' setting in the CMDB CI Class Manager ensures that when a CI attribute is manually updated by an administrator, subsequent discovery runs will not overwrite that specific attribute. This setting works at the class level and compares the source of the last update; if the source is 'Manual', the attribute is preserved even if the discovery tool reports a different value. This directly addresses the requirement to prevent discovery from overwriting manual changes without disabling discovery entirely.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Set the CI source to 'Manual' to prevent discovery updates.
Why it's wrong here
Setting source to manual would block all automated updates, which is not desired.
- ✗
Create a business rule to prevent updates from discovery.
Why it's wrong here
A business rule could be overridden and is not the standard method.
- ✓
Configure the 'Preserve manual changes' setting in the CMDB CI Class Manager.
Why this is correct
This setting ensures that manual changes are not overwritten by automated updates.
- ✗
Disable the reconciliation process for the affected CIs.
Why it's wrong here
Disabling reconciliation would stop all data flow, not just preserve manual changes.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SNOW-CSA practice question is part of Courseiva's free ServiceNow certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SNOW-CSA exam.