Seeking best practice for table clean up - wf_history

[SandySeegers]

I'm tinkering with the upgrade to Geneva in a sub-prod instance and working through some of the useful reports they now provide when you upgrade.   One of the reports is "Schema Changes to CLone Excluded Tables".   One of the tables in the list is wf_history.   I'm trying to minimize any "game-day" surprises so I checked the size of every table on the list.

It turns out that wf_history has a whopping 4.2 million records!   That can't be good for performance in general.   And I don't want to waste a lot of time changing that table when we upgrade.   After more poking around I see that most of the underlying workflow related tables are wallowing - since day one.  

So I'm looking wondering what other folks have done to keep this beast under control.   Will archiving the parents take care of these?   Maybe a sledge hammer approach with a few table cleaner rules?

I appreciate your thoughts, in advance.

Sandy

[randrews]

you may want to check the table cleaner entry to verify you are clearing out older workflows....

Introduction to Managing Data - ServiceNow Wiki

section 3.3