Exceeded ServiceNow Storage Limit? Here’s How to Calculate and Reduce ServiceNow Database Size

As per ServiceNow’s data retention policy, organizations that have exceeded the ServiceNow storage limit can be charged for additional storage. 

As such, understanding how to monitor and reduce ServiceNow database size is becoming increasingly necessary.

Table of contents:

1. How to Calculate ServiceNow Database Size
2. Stay Within the ServiceNow Storage Limit By Reducing Database Size
3. Other Ways to Reduce Storage Footprint
4. Conclusion

Check Whether You’re Exceeding the ServiceNow Storage Limit: Calculate ServiceNow Database Size

The contractual ServiceNow storage limit is far lower than the technical limit, so many organizations reach the contractual limit without realising.

Often, the only indication that there is too much data on the platform is performance degradation – but that can be a symptom of other issues such as API integrations and generating large reports.

So to ensure compliance with the contractual ServiceNow storage limit, organizations should calculate and monitor database size, where database size indicates the total amount of data stored in tables and their corresponding indexes within the database. 

ServiceNow users with customer_admin or partner_admin roles have multiple methods available to them for calculating database size including “Instance Database Footprint” and “Cloud Usage Requests”. 

Both are automated workflows triggered by requests made via Service Catalogs. 

These methods provide contextual information about the size of tables within the database (Instance Database Footprint) or the total size of instances within the account (Cloud Usage Requests)  – allowing users to sort by size.

Instance Database Footprint

Instance Database Footprint can be used to calculate the database size of one instance. 

Users can view their Instance Database Footprint by navigating through:

Now Support > Automation Store > Instance Management > Database Footprint.

Users can then select the instance they would like to run the calculation on, and the number of tables (10 – 100) included in the results.

Cloud Usage Request

Cloud Usage Requests calculate the footprint of all instances associated with the user’s account. 

Users can make a Cloud Usage Request by navigating through:

Now Support > Select a Company > Automation Store > Request Items > Cloud Usage Request.

Other options

Application Usage Overview

Users can also view the instance database size via a usage Application Usage Overview.

Instance Usage > Application Usage Overview > Additional Metrics > Primary DB size (MB).

Custom Report

Custom reports can also be used to calculate ServiceNow database size.

Reports > Create New

1. Name the report and choose the table “UA Instance Info [ua_instance_state].”
2. Choose a report type (both Speedometer and Single Score report types are viable options).
3. Select the Configure tab and update “Aggregation” to “Sum” and update the field to “Primary database size (MB).”
4. Finally, in the Style tab, set the direction to “Minimize” and “Upper/Lower limits” to a range within which the database size will likely fall between.

Staying Within the ServiceNow Storage Limit By Reducing Database Size

Organizations that are approaching or exceeding the ServiceNow storage limit need a way to reduce database size. And off-platform archiving is the best way to achieve this.

• Related post: ServiceNow Data Archiving Best Practices

Archived data is a significant yet frequently overlooked factor in ServiceNow storage usage. 

ServiceNow generates a lot of data that organizations wish to retain for reasons such as analysis and compliance with regulations.

However, not all of this data can be considered “active” and “in use”. As such, users are encouraged to archive inactive data so that it isn’t stored in production tables consuming unnecessary system resources. 

Unfortunately, ServiceNow’s built-in archival features merely transfer data from production tables to archive tables, which means the data still remains within the Platform. 

Since the archive tables exist within ServiceNow, there’s no change (reduction) in the database footprint.

Organizations with heavy data volumes must consider leveraging off-platform archiving solutions to store archived data more efficiently, within external repositories. 

By reducing the database footprint, off-platform archiving not only helps users avoid additional ServiceNow storage fees, but it also further improves ServiceNow’s performance by reducing the strain on the platform’s system resources.

Other Ways to Reduce ServiceNow Database Size

Besides off-platform archiving, there are several other ways to reduce ServiceNow database size: 

Table Rotation

Table rotation helps to control data growth within tables. By regularly removing old data, it makes space for new entries. Using the “sys_created_on” field, data sets are divided into multiple tables (subtables or “shards”) based on user-defined periods. The number of available tables is determined by the number of rotations set by the user.

For example, if the duration is set to 7 days and rotations are set to 4, each subtable will hold data from the past 7 days. Once the last subtable in the rotation is used (in this case, the fourth subtable), the process repeats and overwrites the first subtable.

Table Cleaner

By default, the table cleaner runs hourly, removing older, expired, or unwanted records from tables, thus keeping the data growth in check. It removes/deletes records deletion per table cleaner rules:

• Match field (typically a date value such as “sys_created_on”)
• Age in seconds, determining when the delete event triggers
• Filter conditions to further refine the criteria for deletion

Shadow Table Cleanup

When records are deleted, a shadow table is created to temporarily store them for potential rollback. 

Such records are cleaned up after a few days, but frequent deletions mean that new data enters before the clean up occurs, leading to an increasing amount of data in the shadow table.

Shadow tables can consume hundreds of gigabytes or even terrabytes of space and users have no means of calculating the amount of data in shadow tables themselves. However, they can instead open a ServiceNow Support Case to do so.

In Conclusion: Avoid Exceeding the ServiceNow Storage Limit By Using All of the Tools Available

Managing the growth of data in your ServiceNow database effectively, requires all of the available tools, and a well considered retention policy to support them. 

Data that is not covered under the retention policy can be managed using ServiceNow’s various database management capabilities. However, the retention policy should be periodically reviewed to ensure that it meets the organizations current requirements. 

Archiving off-platform should be considered when an organization is required to retain data that is currently inactive, and internal retention policies (accounting for regulatory compliance) should outline the data this applies to.

This way, organizations can retain data more efficiently, in repositories that provide a more cost effective and efficient means of storing and accessing data (e.g. for the sake of audits, analysis or otherwise). 

While ServiceNow does not support off-platform archiving out of the box, users can upgrade the platform’s capabilities via the ServiceNow-native application, Data Archive for ServiceNow.

The archiving solution from ServiceNow partners, Perspectium, is purpose-built for the ServiceNow platform. Among other benefits, it allows users to archive off-platform to an external repository of their choice to better manage their storage footprint. 

• Related resource: Data Archive for ServiceNow Solution Sheet.

Capable of transferring tens of millions of records off-platform per day, Data Archive was built to overcome data replication and transfer limitations of ServiceNow.

As such, Data Archive for ServiceNow is perfect for organizations that are currently – or close to – exceeding ServiceNow’s storage limit, and incurring the additional fees that apply.

To learn more about Perspectium’s Data Archive solution, contact us today or request a demo!