What ways do you monitor your clones/upgrade work

[Edward Rosario]

Hello All,
For the past few clones/upgrades, we've handled our pre/post clone/upgrade tasks via an excel spreadsheet that I inherited.  I was wanting to see what other methods do you Admins use for your clones/upgrades. for example, Jira, Playbooks, etc..

Thanks for the assistance

[Mark Roethof · Accepted solution]

Hi there,

ATF on subproduction. Instance Scan on production and subproduction. Limiting as much as possible manual checks. And for System Clones ofcourse it starts with having zero manual steps!

[Edward Rosario]

Thanks Mark, so do you have a checklist that you use? for example
1. Preserve any in progress update set 
2. Turn off email
3. Back up themes
4. Backup mid server
5. Backup any non-AD group
etc..

[Mark Roethof]

Well perhaps ther first one yes. But turn of email? Back up themes? Back up mid server? Etcetera, etcetera... why manual? Why not leverage clone preservers, clone excludes, clone cleanup scripts?

At 3 customers I've achieved now that - apart from the update sets - there are ZERO manual steps involved. So checklist? Which checklist 😁

I am planning on writing a (free) System Clone Guide since ServiceNow is not doing this. Though that will be somewhere January since its a ton of work.

[Edward Rosario]

Great, Thanks Mark. Look forward to that guide