best practices regarding rebooting or resetting a ServiceNow instance in a production environment.

[Pradeepkr]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for advice and best practices regarding rebooting or resetting a ServiceNow instance in a production environment.

Under what circumstances should a production instance reboot be considered?
What is the proper procedure to follow to ensure minimal disruption to users?
Are there any risks or considerations that I should be aware of, particularly around data integrity, service availability, or system configurations?
Are there alternatives to a full reboot that could address performance issues or errors?
Additionally, I've seen some mentions of resetting an instance to an "out-of-the-box" state—how does this differ from a simple reboot, and would this be advisable in a production environment?

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

Hi @Pradeepkr 

I'm looking for advice and best practices regarding rebooting or resetting a ServiceNow instance in a production environment.

Atul: Reboot and reset are 2 different concepts and way of working. Reboot will start the instance but reset will wipes all data/ plugins / customization and bring fully OOTB. Like a vanilla. We never do reset of prod. 

Under what circumstances should a production instance reboot be considered?

Atul: As per my experience when system is very very slow.
What is the proper procedure to follow to ensure minimal disruption to users?

Atul: To do this, better log a HI support and also involve your SN Account manager.

https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0538835

https://www.servicenow.com/community/developer-forum/zboot/m-p/1975691

Are there any risks or considerations that I should be aware of, particularly around data integrity, service availability, or system configurations?

Atul: Seems No. but it is machine so anything can be go wrong.
Are there alternatives to a full reboot that could address performance issues or errors?
Additionally, I've seen some mentions of resetting an instance to an "out-of-the-box" state—how does this differ from a simple reboot, and would this be advisable in a production environment?

Atul: The above links help you.

[Pradeepkr]

Thanks ,Atul for you quick response. I would like to know how to restart a prod instance, it will be helpful for me if you provide me set of steps for reboot of instance.

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

To do Zboot log a Now support case and team will guide you, also contact your SN account manager as well. I did not find any doc for the same, also look like Zboot in Prod is not recommened.

https://www.servicenow.com/community/now-platform-blog/video-tutorial-how-to-zboot-an-instance/ba-p/...

[Bert_c1]

You will have to request an instance reboot by creating a Support Case. Users have no control over that process. What will happen if the support team allows this is that the secondary instance will become primary and the old primary instance will be rebooted.  However, I suspect the support team will question why you want to do that. There is staff in the data centers that monitor instance performance/health.