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Cloning Strategy

Richard101
Mega Expert

‎07-20-2016 01:36 PM

We have been using ServiceNow for about 2 months now, and ran into a few hiccups with cloning. The first was around users. We created a bunch of invalid references in our testing environments since we excluded user data from our initial clones. We fixed this by now bringing down all users, roles, groups and the three membership tables. We initially had the users excluded since we wanted to keep the access we had in the testing instances. So, my questions around this are:

  • What is your strategy around user access?
  • Do you have connections to non-prod versions of your HR system and AD to import test users and create/assign groups?
  • Is there anything around users that you would exclude, preserve, or script in a cleanup script?

The second issue we just ran into was the loss of activity on our SDLC module. This is something we had in test, but not active in our production instance. When we cloned down, we've seem to have lost all of the activities on defects and enhancements except the most recent.

  • How could we have avoided this situation?
  • Are there other tables like the Activities table with which we should take special care?

Finally, are there any other suggestions you have around cloning that aren't in the wiki or do you have any favorite ServiceNow-endorsed suggestions?

We just did our first upgrade, so we are learning lots very fast! I look forward to learning from veteran developers/administrators.

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12 REPLIES 12

Richard101
Mega Expert
In response to HugoFirst

‎07-21-2016 06:42 AM

Thanks Steve. That is really good information on something that could baffle testers who are testing with cloned records. Why do you not bring the Workflow contexts over?


0 Helpfuls

HugoFirst
Kilo Sage
In response to Richard101

‎07-21-2016 06:52 AM

We don't explicitly exclude the workflow contexts.   They just don't "make the trip".


It may be a result of us checking "exclude large attachment data".


There is a lot of the clone process which appears opaque, so I experimented with it and came up with the settings that seem to work best.


That said, it appears that the clone ALWAYS comes from the Standby Database, even if you choose "Source Instance".


0 Helpfuls

Richard101
Mega Expert
In response to HugoFirst

‎07-21-2016 06:56 AM

I appreciate you sharing the results of your "experiments." Have you contacted ServiceNow about the clone always coming from the standby database?


0 Helpfuls

HugoFirst
Kilo Sage
In response to Richard101

‎07-21-2016 07:20 AM

We did contact ServiceNow, though it has been a while and I don't remember the exact feedback.


My recollection is that it caused performance problems in the prod instance while the clone was underway.


I suppose that if you have a "small" data footprint, it might not be a problem.   In fact, it may be that it only works that way for us.


But my organization is very performance sensitive, so we go out of our way to avoid impacting performance in a bad way.