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Hi there,
Keeping your instance database footprint tidy? Reducing instance database footprint? An important subject, though actually a subject that barely gets attention. Barely if you search for any content, hardly any replies when reaching out on ServiceNow Community/LinkedIn/Slack/etcetera, and to be honest: also if you look at customers in general... so much focus on Development, so little (or almost no) focus on Platform or System Administration. Also there is not a single ServiceNow course that goes in depth on this subject.
So why is this such an important subject? ServiceNow runs in the cloud, right? Sure (unless you are on-prem of course), though that doesn't mean ServiceNow does everything for you! Keeping your instance database footprint tidy and reducing the database footprint, will have several positive effects: Performance gain, slimmer and optimized tables, less future manageability or technical depth, shorter system clone time (or time to place backups back in case of emergencies!), avoiding licensing implications if your database footprint gets over 4 TB, etcetera.
In the upcoming weeks, I will share several blogs regarding reducing your instance database footprint and keeping your instance database footprint tidy. All based on experiences gained in the field, at several customers, after collaborating with ServiceNow Support, investigating myself, etcetera.
If you have any thoughts yourself on this subject, don't hesitate to share!
Topics in this series of blogs (I will update this section when publishing new blogs):
- Maintain Audit Delete and Audit Relation
- Maintain Attachments and Attachment Documents
- Activating/adding Table cleaners
- Reduce (over)auditing
- Lower duration Table Rotation
- Drop syslog_trans_prejakarta* tables
Transaction Log Entry [syslog_transaction]
Every ServiceNow instance comes out-of-the-box with Transaction Log Entry tables. Multiple tables, since it's out-of-the-box on Table rotation with 8 rotations. In very short, "The transaction log records all browser activity for an instance. To aid in debugging of system issues, you can filter transaction logs by application scope, limiting transactions that appear to only those transactions originating in specific scopes."
syslog_trans_prejakarta
Customers on an Instance that was already up and running before the Jakarta release, might have noticed the presence of some tables containing "syslog_trans_prejakarta" when viewing your Database Footprint report. For some customers these tables will only be a few Gigabytes, while for some customers these tables might be way over 100 Gigabytes. Asking ServiceNow Support for clarification on these tables, "These tables are used to compare per upgrade data when you had a recent upgrade. For Jakarta we had a table structure change on this table thus this is a leftover as we are few version later already." Somehow ServiceNow just did not clean these tables up pro-actively, while these tables have zero function at all and are just consuming Database Footprint for no reason.
Drop syslog_trans_prejakarta* tables
Since the syslog_trans_prejakarta* tables have zero function and are just consuming Database Footprint, these tables should be dropped. ServiceNow Support can do this for, you just need to create a Support Case for this requesting to drop these tables.
Result
While dropping the syslog_trans_prejakarta tables won't give a major boost regarding performance (unless they are in critical status), dropping these tables is a good thing to do from a manageability point of view. Also this could lower the Database Footprint again with a good amount. And that just by spending a few minutes on creating a ServiceNow Support Case requesting to drop these tables.
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That's it. Hope you like it. If any questions or remarks, let me know!
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Kind regards,
Mark Roethof
Independent ServiceNow Consultant
4x ServiceNow Developer MVP
4x ServiceNow Community MVP
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