What is best practice for stale CI relationships?

[MBarrott]

I'm in the process of cleaning up our CMDB which hasn't been managed for many years. 

One thing I've noticed is that there is a high volume (high enough to breach the OOTB threshold) for stale relationships. 

I've since established retirement policies for many of these records but the relationships remain. 

What is the best practice approach to resolving these stale relationships? Not sure if archiving would alleviate this issue or if there is a better way. 

[Anupam1]

Step-by-Step Best Practices

• Understand What Makes a Relationship "Stale"

• A relationship is considered stale when either CI in the relationship hasn’t been updated or rediscovered within the CMDB Health threshold (typically 90 days).
• These are flagged in the CMDB Health Dashboard under Relationship Health.

• Retire or Decommission the CI First

• You’ve already implemented retirement policies — great start!
• Ensure the CI’s Install Status is set to “Retired” or “Decommissioned” and that its lifecycle state reflects its true status.

• Remove Relationships for Retired CIs

• Best practice is to remove relationships involving retired or stale CIs to prevent inaccurate dependency views and reduce noise in CMDB Health reports.
• Use CMDB Query Builder or Relationship Cleanup scripts to identify and delete these relationships in bulk.

• Automate Cleanup Where Possible

• Consider creating a scheduled job or business rule that:
• Detects relationships where one or both CIs are retired.
• Deletes or flags those relationships for review.

• Avoid Archiving as a Primary Strategy

• Archiving does not remove relationships from the CMDB — it only hides them from active views.
• Relationships tied to archived CIs may still appear in health dashboards and impact performance.

• Use CMDB Health Metrics to Monitor Progress

• After cleanup, monitor the Relationship Health Score to ensure improvements.
• Set up alerts or dashboards to track newly stale relationships over time.

• Tool & Purpose:
  1.   CMDB Health Dashboard : Identify stale relationships and Cis.
  2. CMDB Query Builder: Visualize and bulk-edit relationships.
  3. Scripted Cleanup Jobs: Automate deletion of stale links.
  4. Lifecycle Workflows: Ensure CIs transition properly to retired states