stale CIs in our CMDB that haven’t been updated in a long time

[ShivamKumar78]

We currently have over 100,000 stale CIs in our CMDB that haven’t been updated in a long time. What’s the best approach to handle them? Should we consider deleting these records, or is there a recommended cleanup strategy?

[Tanushree Maiti]

Hi @ShivamKumar78 

• To improve CMDB hygiene and reduce manual cleanup effort, use the native CMDB Data Manager to automate CI lifecycle management. Configure Data Manager policies to automatically transition Configuration Items (CIs) to a Retired state (for example, Install Status = 7) when they have not been discovered or updated for 90–120 days.
• Before performing any bulk retirement or cleanup activities, verify that the target CIs are not associated with active incidents, change requests, or critical business applications. Use the CMDB Health Dashboard to identify stale CI classes, assess data quality, and prioritize cleanup activities based on the greatest impact.
• When retiring CIs, ensure that related records are also managed appropriately. Implement a business rule or scheduled flow to identify and remove or archive orphaned relationship records (such as those in the cmdb_rel_ci table). Cleaning up these relationships helps preserve the structural integrity of the CMDB and prevents invalid dependency mappings.