Deleting Next Hop Routing Rule

[Todd36]

We have a rather unmanageable CMDB. Can Next Hop Routing Rule entries be deleted without impact, not the class just the data? Most were created during a subnet discovery that was abandoned and are old and 50% have not been updated in over a month and there are 1766254 of them.

My thought is that the valid ones will be recreated with subsequent discoveries?

[Todd_Goodhew]

I would think it would be fine to delete all the data in the table. The only impact would be if you are using the data. ServiceNow isnt using it. The long term is this situation will return. Networks change and come/go over time. You dont want to have to purge data everytime. How are you using the data? In other words, why the concern over the aged data?

[Larry Youngquis]

I had this same question a year or two ago and it sounds like a very similar circumstance.  The instance had 2.1m+ Next Hop Routing Rule records due to a flawed/faulty discovery process.  Most were old, stale and limited value.

We recommended deleting them, but had a very cautious ServiceNow Platform Administrator (absolutely nothing wrong with that!) and there was a strong bias against deleting any CI record for any reason whatsoever.

We escalated to ServiceNow tier 2 support and we could never get a definitive answer.  The answer is always, "well, sure.  you probably could delete them." or "I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to delete them..."

I think there's a very strong desire not to go on the record with an answer to this question.  Just in case something bad may happen and fingers start pointing.

Long story short, the client kept the 2.1million (and counting) bad records for a total of 5m CIs in their CMDB.

My opinion is the same as Todd's.  I'd delete them.  No guts no glory.  But ensure that discovery is working properly and any needed records will be recreated.

[CasperJT]

Alternatively I suppose you could consider whether the records could be archived. Not sure it is the right choice for you here, but it would mean you keep the data for a while, without being able to interact with it and you can then 'destroy' them at a later stage.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-platform-administration/page/administer/database-rotation...

[Marshall Parker]

We had the same issue, this class alone grew to represent close to 2/3 of the count of all CIs in our CMDB.  We ran into similar roadblocks with getting anything official as an answer, both from ServiceNow and our MSPs.

Evaluation was showing that with every discovery of the related network components, net new records were added to this table & all old records were abandoned to age out, which caused an incredible volume growth over time.   We eventually went with a scheduled flow designer that marked any aged record [currently set at updated more than 30 days ago] as Retired - and then items that are Retired fit into our existing archive & purge policy which ultimately removes no longer needed records via a table cleaner action.

As always, your mileage may vary.