Cleanup of sys_audit table

[J Benson]

Hello Experts, 

We recently discovered one of our tables (sys_object_source) is contributing in large part to the ballooning of our sys_audit table. We were able to determine that this audit practice is not needed and have added the necessary attribute to halt further auditing, but it leaves us with nearly seven million unneeded records on the sys_audit table from sys_object_source.

Does anyone have any experience cleaning this table up? I saw Table Cleaner was a potential option, but I'm not sure of its viability given the number records we need purged.

Thanks in advance,

James

[Sohail Khilji]

Hi @J Benson ,

Follow this, and all associated article on this topic by @Mark Roethof :

https://www.servicenow.com/community/now-platform-blog/keeping-your-instance-database-footprint-tidy...

I hope this helps...

[Sumanth16]

Hi @J Benson ,

Please refer to below thread;

https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0724183

If I could help you with your Query then, please hit the Thumb Icon and mark it as Correct !!

Thanks & Regards,

Sumanth Meda

[Mark Roethof · Accepted solution]

Hi there,

7 million is not so much, for bigger/older customers unmanaged the sys_audit runs into billions of records 😁
Though good one that you spotted it, stopped the creation of unnecessary sys_audit for this one, and are going to clean it up.

To start, Table Cleaner: definitely NO. Table Cleaner is not for a one-time deletion. Table Cleaner is for maintaining. Initial large cleanups are usually also not the way to go with Table Cleaner, though 7 million is not that much.

ServiceNow Support did publish a article on this, though a bit outdated and since its only 7 million records... you could go for out-of-the-box no-code solution "Delete Jobs" (System Data Management > Delete Jobs).

[J Benson]

Mark,

Thank you for the recommendation. I was successful in my development instance in removing the offending records. However, I can't find much documentation on System Data Management for the Vancouver release. On my instance, there's a 'Run Business Rules and Engines' option available when creating a new job. For the life of me, I can't find any ServiceNow documentation that explains this option. Any clue?

Thanks!

James