Query: ServiceNow database footprint management

[Abhishek Chava1]

Hi,

I am working on managing our DB footprint. While we are aware of the Database management policies (Archival/table rotation/deletion rules) and are in the middle of implementing them. We are also exploring how to store the ever growing data outside of ServiceNow such that it remains available for reporting from external tools (e.g. Tableau). This would also provide us with an additional backup. However from my research it looks like there are several challenges associated with moving data outside of ServiceNow.

Have you implemented any such model in your org. Could you recommend any reliable third party solution ?

Any pointers would be highly appreciated.

[Diogo Ramos]

Hello

Not sure if you already saw but you can find a lot of information about DB Footprint on these articles by @Mark Roethof -> ~444 Articles, Blogs, Videos, Podcasts, Share proj... - ServiceNow Community

☰ Database Footprint

- 2025-09-01 - Article - Zurich's Sys Audit Retention (undocumented)

- 2024-07-15 - Article - New Patch or Family Release? Check your Sys Audit DELETED records!

- 2024-07-01 - Article - Do not use deleteMultiple() on tables with currency fields

- 2024-05-20 - Blog - Keeping your instance database footprint tidy (09): Reclaiming Table Free Space
- 2024-02-16 - Article - Purge Orphan Attachments (custom solution and... Washington out-of-the-box!) 

- 2024-01-31 - Article - Bug report: Orphaned ML Model Artifact attachment document records

- 2024-01-24 - Blog - Keeping your instance database footprint tidy (08): Maintain Email 

- 2024-01-09 - Blog - Keeping your instance database footprint tidy (07): Cleanup Shadow tables
- 2023-11-29 - Blog - Keeping your instance database footprint tidy (06): Drop syslog_trans_prejakarta* tables

- 2023-11-13 - Blog - Keeping your instance database footprint tidy (05): Lower duration Table Rotation
- 2023-10-02 - Blog - Keeping your instance database footprint tidy (04): Reduce (over)Auditing

- 2023-09-20 - Article - Impact Graph table rapidly growing: Solved (be aware though... the fix does not fix everything!)

- 2023-08-01 - Blog - Keeping your instance database footprint tidy (03): Activating/adding Table cleaners 

- 2023-07-31 - Share - Activating/adding Table cleaners 

- 2023-07-05 - Blog - Keeping your instance database footprint tidy (02): Maintain Attachments and Attachment Documents

- 2023-06-13 - Blog - Keeping your instance database footprint tidy (01): Maintain Audit Delete and Audit Relation

- 2023-05-24 - Article - Any Predictive Intelligence solutions in use on your instance? Check your Attachments table ASAP!

- 2023-04-17 - Blog - Why you should enquire about database footprint of an Instance 

A cool zurich feature as well :

Data Management Console

When you say that there are challenges associated with moving data, what do you mean ? Normally it is pretty easy to move data outside of SN.  There is no perfect solution you have to review what are your requirements and see what makes more sense based on that. There are Tableau oob connectors, you can use oob rest table APIs, you can have Kafka keeping your outside DB up to date, you can also request SN to have another instance just for reporting purposes, there are lot of partner applications available and probably some other ways.

You need to determine when do you want to have data outside of SN, is it just for purely archiving purposes? Do you want to keep data in 2 different systems at the same time and keep it updated? Do you need to archive and restore records?

For me I mainly use archiving/deletion rules, but each organization will have different requirements depending on long you need to keep the data for, how much data you generate as well.

Have also a look at topic of integration design : ServiceNow Integration Pattern Decision Tree by @Jochen Geist 

Hope it helps.