Cloning an Instance - User, Group and Roles Preservation of Data

[Jason Stuart]

Good Morning, hope I posted this to the right forum.  i have done some searching on this topic, and while I have seen results, none of them are speaking to me.  

We are gearing up to do a clone of an instance. (Production to Development).  One of the requirements we have is to ensure that the existing roles we have in the sub-prod instance remain functional.  I.E. User A has these Perm's, while Group A has these Perm's - and so forth.  ServiceNOW mentions the fact that you should not do data preservation on these tables - how to people go about preserving this data?  

Are exports/imports done?  If so, for what tables?  

Thanks in advance for your help.

-Jason

[Alberto Consonn]

Hi,

I would suggest to read carefully the official documentation below, it will be useful for your need:

Data preservation on cloning target instances

Be sure to do the System Clone > Preserve Data.

If I have answered your question, please mark my response as correct so that others with the same question in the future can find it quickly and that it gets removed from the Unanswered list.

Thank you

Cheers
Alberto

[Jason Stuart]

Thanks Alberto, I did see this.  What it is telling me is that if you must preserve table data such as users, groups, and roles, consider exporting the records to a file and importing it after the clone is complete.  Do I just export the three tables?  Is there more to it than this?  That is my confusion.

Thanks!

[Allen Andreas · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I believe it's not recommended to preserve the roles because the roles actually have different sys_ids across the instances, more so for installed plugins, like ITBM for example...the same timecard_user role actually has a different sys_id across the different instances, so preserving it when the clone comes over (with that different plugin activated) could cause issues.

If you wish to keep your groups and and roles and all that, you still "own" the right to decide if that's what you want to do.

Just remember to add it to your target instance preserve data table list and if you wish to also exclude it altogether, use the exclusion feature for that.

-Preserve keeps what you have, but adds anything else beyond those records...

-Exclude the data, but actually means to bring in a blank table...

So you'd need to add it to both preserve and exclude which would mean, don't bring in anything new and keep what I already have.

Please mark reply as Helpful/Correct, if applicable. Thanks!

[Jason Stuart]

Allen, Thanks - I understand.  and I agree, the SYS_ID is what got to me.  If we preserve the data, it may not link up to records coming from the Prod Instance.  Thank you for your answer.  I may just have to manually do it to get our environments aligned.