Tools to monitor ServiceNow instance performance
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03-29-2023 05:19 AM
Hi Team,
There have been many performance related issues in my customer's instance. Sometimes instance load faster and sometime instance load slow. This issue is very random
Also there are many automated performance related Hi case created by the servicenow alert system.
How can I monitor servicenow performance? How can I proactively monitor and catch such issues?
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05-06-2025 03:04 PM
Troubleshooting ServiceNow performance issues can be quite challenging and time consuming, so be prepared to pull a lot of logs and look through a lot of records and transactions. ServiceNow provides some general troubleshooting guides that I highly recommend you look into:
- KB0517241 - Troubleshooting slow instance performance
- KB0517282 - Troubleshooting general performance issues on all applications
- Platform Performance
I also highly recommended you meet with your ServiceNow Account Rep, as they are usually very helpful in providing resources and guidance on what steps to take to resolve the issue.
Unfortunately I don't have much experience on proactive monitoring, but I'd expect you will need to dig in a little regardless to determine the issue.
From my own experience I can offer some guidance to hopefully speed up your investigation process:
- Are issues actually occurring randomly, or only appear random? Are performance issues worse within a certain timeframe (i.e. 14:00 - 17:00 daily)?
- If they are happening frequently within a certain timeframe, I'd go to the Transaction Log [syslog_transaction]. You can filter the Created field based on the timeframe and look for records with a high Response Time. If this issue occurred for a specific user, you can also put their username in the Created by field to try and narrow down your search.
- How many users where active or online when the performance issue occurred?
- Performance issues can general be separated into Client-side issues or Server-side issues. What action was taken when the issue occurred? Loading a form? Catalog Item? List? Did part of the form load when the issue occurred?
- If the issue is Client-side related, this likely means that there is a lot of processing happening on the browser side (e.g. Client Scripts).
- When you encounter an issue, wait until the form completely loads, and in the bottom right-hand side of the form will be a stopwatch icon. Clicking this can give you an idea of where the issue is (see attached for examples).
- Check the Slow Transactions table under System Diagnostics > Stats.
- Are you having issues with the entire instance loading? If you ping your instance, are you seeing high response times or dropped packets?
- This could indicate a local network, VPN or firewall related issue depending on where users are connecting from.
Hopefully this helps! Please feel free to provide additional information based on your investigation and I will do my best to help.
