Multiple Node Restarts due to Out-Of-Memory (OOM) – Anyone else experiencing this recently?

[Pawel Barcik]

Hello Community,

We have recently started encountering a critical issue on our Production instance where multiple application nodes are unexpectedly restarting due to Out-Of-Memory (OOM) errors.

According to Now Support (HI Case analysis), the heap dump points to a specific long-running Scheduled Job / Script Include responsible for data integration Support's immediate advice was to optimize our script, reduce the data set, or implement batching/pagination.

However, here is the catch: this integration script and the data volume have been running exactly the same way for several years without a single issue. Absolutely no changes or code modifications were introduced on our side prior to these OOM crashes.

This makes us suspect that there might have been a recent underlying platform change, infrastructure update, or altered JVM memory allocation limits on the ServiceNow side that is causing the platform to fail under standard, long-term operational workloads.

Has anyone else experienced a sudden spike in Out-Of-Memory errors or unexpected node restarts during large data imports or scheduled jobs recently? If you faced a similar situation, how did you challenge support, or what was the actual root cause?

Any insights or shared experiences would be highly appreciated!

[Tanushree Maiti]

Hi @Pawel Barcik ,

We are facing a similar issue and are addressing it proactively before it becomes unmanageable. Our instance is also quite old — more than 15 years.

1. Please check whether you have the instance health scan report available. Review it thoroughly and start working on overall platform health improvements.

   a. Excessive use of gs.log/ gs.print statements inside large loops can silently impact or terminate jobs.

   b. Verify whether the remote system has increased the volume of records being returned. If so, implement pagination or apply limit clauses in the API calls.  ( possible reason for your error)

   c. Ensure coding best practices are being followed throughout the implementation.

2. Since the instance is relatively old, it would also be a good time to start planning data archival activities. Before proceeding, align with the business teams on data retention requirements for each module.

Refer:

Performance Best Practices for Server-side Coding in ServiceNow

https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB1716784