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Best practices for purging/archiving 800M records from the sys_audit table?

AbhishekK010747
Kilo Explorer

an hour ago

Hello ServiceNow experts,

 

We are currently facing a massive data volume challenge in our production instance. Our sys_audit table has grown to approximately 800 million records, and it is severely impacting our database performance and storage.

We need to purge/clean up this table, but given the sheer volume, we want to ensure we do it safely without locking the database or crashing the instance.

 

I have a few questions for the community:

  1. What is the safest, recommended approach to purge or archive data from sys_audit at this scale?
  2. Should we use standard Archive Rules, Table Cleaners, or request a backend deletion from ServiceNow HI Support?
  3. What are the performance implications or risks we should watch out for during this process?

Any step-by-step guidance, scripts, or lessons learned from anyone who has tackled audit data at this scale would be greatly appreciated!


Thanks in advance!

Abhishek Kannawar

 
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RobbertT
Kilo Contributor

an hour ago

With 800M+ sys_audit records, I'd avoid bulk deletes directly in production. The safest approach is to review your data retention policy, test archiving/purging in a sub-production instance first, and then work with ServiceNow HI Support for a backend strategy if needed.