Instance performance telemetry reports

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  • Updated March 12, 2026
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    Summary of Instance Performance Telemetry Reports

    Instance performance telemetry reports in ServiceNow enable organizations to monitor and analyze the health, performance trends, and database growth of their instances. These reports help make instance performance management faster, smarter, and more efficient by providing downloadable summaries and visualizations. Customers can generate and schedule reports tailored to specific instances and date ranges via the Instance Observer > Reports module.

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    Report Options and Usage

    Users can select report type, instance, and date range to generate reports. Reports can be downloaded or scheduled for periodic delivery. Additional metric details are accessible through the Help menu. Some reporting features depend on the customer's Impact package subscription, with differences in data retention periods and feature availability.

    Supported Report Types and Impact Package Matrix

    • Daily Performance Metrics Report: Available to all Impact packages, provides a current snapshot of instance health.
    • Performance Trend Report: Available to Advanced and Total packages, offers detailed performance metric trends over time.
    • Database Growth Report: Available to all packages, shows database size changes and table growth.
    • Self Service Alerts: Available for Advanced and Total packages only.

    Daily Performance Metrics Report Details

    This report includes six sub-reports presenting key health indicators:

    • ServiceNow Platform Health: Node availability, response, and lag times compared over 30 days with color-coded thresholds.
    • Health Indicator: Counts of slow transactions, queries, and long-running jobs compared to previous periods.
    • Top 10 Slow Transactions: Lists transactions with highest average execution times (not available for Guided Impact customers in sub-production).
    • Top 10 Slow Queries: Lists queries with highest average execution times (not supported for Guided Impact customers in sub-production).
    • Top 10 Long Running Jobs: Lists jobs with the longest duration including node and worker details.
    • Critical Support Cases: Summary and links to severity 1 and 2 support cases including issue tracking information.

    Performance Trend and Custom Performance Reports

    The Performance Trend report allows drill-down into specific system performance metrics such as transaction times, database response, semaphore depth, event queues, jobs, memory, and user sessions.

    The Custom Performance Report extends this capability by allowing selection of 1 to 20 metrics from over 90 available metrics, enabling dynamic and tailored performance analysis. Reports can be visualized as charts or tables and exported via email, CSV, or PDF.

    Database Growth Report

    This report tracks database size changes over selected time frames, including metrics for the primary database and shards, plus the top 20 tables by size and growth rates. Guided customers have a maximum selectable range of 45 days.

    Encryption Report

    For customers outside the Regulated market, this report shows the status of database encryption services subscribed to, such as Disk Encryption, Table Space Encryption (TSE), and Cloud Encryption. This helps verify encryption coverage for instance databases.

    Quickly generate reports to download and share with your business stakeholders, making  organizations faster, smarter, and better in their  instance performance management.

    Visualize instance performance  telemetry over time and quickly generate reports to share with your team and business stakeholders.

    Run a report on any instance to generate a downloadable summary on daily instance health, performance trend or database growth.

    Report options

    Tailor various reports specific to your business needs with a few steps.

    Navigate to Instance Observer > Reports. Select the Report Type, the Instance, and the Date Range for the report.

    Select Generate report and the report renders. On the report page, you have the option to download the report or to schedule the report to be run periodically.

    Report types.

    For additional information about a report, select Help > Metrics from the main menu and select the option from the right-hand menu.

    Support matrix per Impact package

    Some Instance Observer reporting features vary between the Impact package that you are subscribed to. Reference the support matrix for details.

    • ✓ = Supported
    • X = Not supported
    Table 1. Performance reports support matrix
    Guided Advanced Total
    Daily Performance Metrics report
    Performance Trend report X
    Database Growth report
    Data retention 45 days 6 months 6 months
    Self Service Alerts X
    Note:
    For more information on subscription support, see Impact packages.

    Daily Performance Metrics Report

    There are six daily performance metrics sub-reports that are available that show a current snapshot of the health of the instance.

    Table 2. Sub-report and description
    Report Description
    ServiceNow Platform Health
    • Reflects node availability, response, and lag times.
    • Compares availability and anomalies from today and the last 30 days.
    • Reports are based on the system thresholds that are set in the system and color codes the anomalies accordingly, with Green, Yellow, or Red.
    Health Indicator
    • Displays number of slow transactions, queries, and long running jobs.
    • Compares the counts between today, yesterday, and the last 30 day average.
    • Reports are based on the system thresholds that are set in the system and color codes the counts accordingly, with Green, Yellow, or Red.
    Top 10 Slow Transactions
    • Finds the most executed transactions by total execution time and then takes the top 10 transactions that incur the highest average execution time.
    • Results list the instance page along with the average and total execution times, and the total count the page was executed.
    Note:
    Top 10 Slow Transactions is not available for Guided Impact customers in sub‑production instances.
    Top 10 Slow Queries
    • Finds the most executed queries by total execution time and then takes the top 10 queries that incur the highest average execution time.
    • Results list the query along with the average and total execution times, and the total count the query was executed.
    Note:
    Top 10 Slow Queries is not supported for Guided Impact customers in sub-production instances.
    Top 10 Long Running Jobs
    • Finds jobs that are incurring highest duration in minutes.
    • Results list the job name, node, worker, and the duration.
    Critical Support Cases
    • Lists the total number of severity 1 and 2 support cases in the report header.
    • Provides case numbers as links, the area, priority, and state, along with tracking who opened the issue.

    Performance Trend Report

    Drill into additional detail on selected performance metrics.

    The following report options are available in regards to system performance:
    • Transaction/Report Times
    • Database response
    • Semaphore depth
    • Event queues
    • Jobs recurring and running
    • Memory
    • User session summaries

    Custom Performance Report

    Generate Custom Performance report selecting a maximum of 20 metrics and a minimum of one metric from a wide range of 90 metrics available across the application. This report is almost the same as Performance Trend report, however offers you the flexibility to choose more metrics from the performance categories in the Performance page and build a dynamic report.

    To configure the Custom Performance Report:

    1. Navigate to the Instance Observer Dashboard page.
    2. Select the Reports tab and click On Demand Reports from the list.
    3. Select the Instance for which you want to run the report.
    4. From the list of report types, select Custom Performance Report.
    5. Select the time frame for the report's duration in the Date Range field.
    6. To add metrics from all the available metrics in the application, select All.
    7. To add metrics from the categories available in the Performance page, select the specific category from the list.
    8. Select Clear selection to remove any previous selected metric from the list.

      The selected metrics from the Available performance metrics column appear in the Selected performance metrics column on the right.

    9. Select Generate Report.

    Custom performance report offers more metrics to measure performance.

    Each metric render a different visualization, where many of them are based on time series rendering as charts, while some of them are tables where the key performance indicators are aggregated in a tabular format.

    You have the flexibility to build the report in any order that you prefer. Once the report is ready, you can email it, set as CSV file, or generate a PDF.

    Database Growth Report

    There are several database growth reports that are available that show how the instance database has increased over a selected date range.
    Note:
    Guided customers may select a range of up to 45 days.
    Table 3. Database report and description
    Report Description
    Primary Database Various metrics on how the database has either grown or decreased over the selected time frame. Total DBI size based on the sum of all tables, calculated every 4 hours.
    Database by Size (Including Shards) Various metrics on how the database has either grown or decreased over the selected, including shards. Total DBI Size align with primary shards, this is calculated every 4 hours and can be used to visualize database growth over time.
    Top 20 Tables (By Size) Lists table name, size (GB), 1 day growth and rate, and the 7 day growth rate.

    Encryption Report

    Important:
    This report is not available in the Regulated market.
    • DBI encryption status: ServiceNow offers three types of encryption to the dbi's which is a paid service. They are Disk Encryption, Table Space Encryption (TSE), and Cloud Encryption.
    • With this report you can check the status of encryption service that you have subscribed for the dbi's associated with the instances.