IO reports

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 17, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of IO reports

    IO reports in Instance Observer provide detailed insights into the health and performance of your ServiceNow instances. These reports track key metrics such as database growth, encryption status, transaction and query performance, and critical support cases. They enable you to analyze trends, schedule automated reporting, and share actionable data with stakeholders to maintain and improve instance health.

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    Key Features

    • Daily Performance Metric Report: Highlights anomalies including standby lag (replication delays to standby datacenter), server response time anomalies, and database response time anomalies. It includes health indicators like slow transaction counts (transactions >4.5 seconds), slow queries (>1 second), and long-running jobs (>60 minutes), with comparisons to 30-day averages.
    • Top 10 Slow Transactions and Queries: Identifies the most sluggish transactions and queries by average execution time among the top 50 most executed, helping pinpoint performance bottlenecks.
    • Top 10 Running Jobs: Displays jobs with the longest execution times by node and worker.
    • Critical Support Cases: Provides a snapshot of active P1 and P2 cases created within the last 30 days to monitor urgent issues.
    • Performance Trend Report: Combines multiple performance metrics into one report and calculates trends between selected periods, supporting up to six months of data for trend analysis.
    • Database Growth Report: Visualizes database size and table growth, sorted by largest tables. Note that shard data is shown only if shards are configured.
    • URL Sharing for Reports: Enables sharing direct links to charts and reports with timestamped selections, accessible in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Both sender and recipient must have access to the same instance for Triage report links.

    Practical Considerations for ServiceNow Customers

    • Standby lag anomalies trigger automatic P2 cases only if ServiceNow detects risk or impact; sub-production instances should ignore this field.
    • Server response time anomalies require investigation using transaction logs filtered around the time of the anomaly.
    • Database response time anomalies suggest reviewing query patterns to enhance performance.
    • Trend reports do not calculate trends if the selected time period exceeds three months.
    • Reports support scheduling, downloading, and sharing, helping teams proactively manage instance performance and address critical issues promptly.

    Reports in Instance Observer offer insights into the health of the instances, tracks database growth, and encryption status. The reports help you to analyze trends, and to schedule, download, and share these reports.

    Daily Performance Metric Report

    ServiceNow Platform Health
    Standby Lag Anomaly

    Indicates a delay in replication to the database that resides in the standby datacenter, and this results in delays if an AHA was required.

    ServiceNow has an internal monitor and standard operating procedures when lag to the standby site is present. If ServiceNow determines a risk or impact due to lag, a P2 case will be opened automatically.
    Note:
    Not all breach will result in a case. For sub-prod instances, ignore this field in the report.
    Server Response Time Anomaly

    Indicates that user transactions were most likely impacted.

    To determine what transaction(s) was the cause use the transaction logs with a filter +/- 5 minutes around the time of impact.
    Note:
    See the Using the transaction logs [KB0584420] article in the Now Support Knowledge Base
    Database Response Time Anomaly
    Indicates that the database is impacted with a very strong collection to user impact.

    See the Targeting query patterns to maintain or improve performance [KB1064766] article in the Now Support Knowledge Base for the steps and then adjust the time range to +/- 15 minutes around the time of the breach.

    Health Indicator
    Today’s count and yesterday’s count
    Provides a quick glimpse of key health indicators for today and yesterday.
    • Slow Transaction Count is calculated based on any transactions that ran for more than 4.5 seconds.
    • Slow Queries Count is calculated based on any queries that ran for more than 1 second.
    • Long-running jobs Count is calculated based on any job that ran for more than 60 minutes.

    An indicator trend is displayed if the counts are going excessively higher as compared from the 30-day average.

    30-day average
    Provides a quick glimpse of key health indicators for the last 30-days.
    • Slow Transaction Count Average is calculated based on any transactions that ran for more than 4.5 seconds per day averaged over 30 days.
    • Slow Queries Count Average is calculated based on any queries that ran for more than 1 second per day averaged over 30-days.
    • Long running jobs Count Average is calculated based on any jobs that ran for more than 60 minutes day averaged over 30-days.
    Top 10 slow transactions
    Provides a quick glance at your most sluggish 10 transactions.

    The report presents a top 10 list by first identifying the top 50 mostly executed transactions on this instance based on total execution time. Among the 50 transactions list it reports the top 10 transactions by the average execution time.

    Top 10 slow queries
    Provides a quick glance at your most sluggish 10 queries.

    The report comes up with this top 10 list by first identifying the top 50 mostly executed queries on this instance by total execution time. Among those 50 queries, it reports the top 10 queries by the average execution time.

    Top 10 running jobs
    Provides a glance at the most sluggish 10 jobs by execution time per node by worker.
    Critical support cases
    Provides a quick glance at your active cases (P1 and P2) created within the past 30 days.

    Performance Trend Report

    This report provides users with the ability to quickly combine various performance metrics into a single comprehensive report. The report also calculates the trend between the selected time period and the comparison to the previous time period. Since the data is available only for 6 months, if the time period of the report is selected beyond 3 months, the report does not calculate the trend.

    Note:
    The Standby Lag option should not be selected for sub-prod instances.

    Database Growth Report

    This report provides users with the ability to create a report on the database growth.

    Note:
    If shards are not configured, then the chart for database size will not display any shards database. The table growth is sorted in descending order by the highest table size.

    For more information on reports, see Instance performance telemetry reports.

    URL for graphs

    • You can share the URL for charts with respective timestamp so you can open the link directly in a browser with the selected options.
    • You can share the URL at the Performance, Availability, Triage, Reports, and Configure Notification under Alerts tab.
    • IO is supported on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox and the links are valid on these browsers. You must log in to the respective browser to view the shared URL.
    • There is a limitation with sharing the URL for Triage — both the sender and recipient must have the same instance enabled in their accounts.