Service Now production live Instance to Domain Separated Instance

[K-Z]

Hello Community,

In the SN documentation I found the following entry: Domain Separation cannot be activated on production instances that contain customer data.

Why does ServiceNow write it like this?
Has anyone turned on Domain Separation on a production instance?
What risks/mistakes can I expect?
Is ServiceNow support able to somehow verify the data after activating this plugin?

All tips and advice here.

Thanks!

[SatyakiBose]

Hello @K-Z 

The reason it is put like this is because:

1. When you have an active production instance, all the data is present under global scope, and it contains customer data as well.
2. Now if you install domain separation on this instance, you cannot import or move the customer data which are on global domain to customer-specific domains.
3. Only the data that is created post the domain separation plugin can have a domain value.
4. Multiple customers have domain-separated instances. But then the plugin is installed right when the instance was commissioned, and not mid-way when the production instance is used in full fledge.

Hope I was able to make this clear.

Now the reason ServiceNow does not recommend this is to maintain data integrity and avoid data loss and data corruption.

If you need further validation, I would recommend you to have a support case created for official documentation purpose.

[Suggy]

@SatyakiBose May I know what you meant by "Now if you install domain separation on this instance, you cannot import or move the customer data which are on global domain to customer-specific domains."?

In our sandbox, we just tested this. ie cloned prod over sandbox. Then activated domain separation plugin. All the data is in Global. we moved the required data to respective domains using fix scripts. So we are all good wrt testing until now.

[SatyakiBose]

Hi @Suggy 

Please refer to the documenation shared by @Karan Sharma2 below

[Karan Sharma2]

Answer is in ServiceNow Docs at below link.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/tokyo-platform-security/page/administer/company-and-domain-separa...

If you enable Domain Separation towards the end of ServiceNow implementation or once an instance has gone live, your application is at risk in both performance and process. On established instances, depending on how things were structured in development, the risk to the platform and its usability could be high. To learn more about domain separation process, see Understanding domain separation.

For instance, when the Domain Separation plugin is enabled, the Domain (sys_domain) column is added to the task table and every existing record is automatically placed in global. To use a script to assign all of the records into the correct domains, an established parent/child hierarchy is required. These types of scripted actions risk data corruption or loss, and possible production down time as large amounts of data are moved. Much of the platform code also is placed into global, such as business rules, client scripts, form views, and workflows.

If a customer creates code or modifies ServiceNow code, there is risk to platform performance and usability. Instance owners could severely delay their implementation or experience lengthy down-times with this type of approach.