Many organizations find that purpose-built backup solutions for ServiceNow are better suited to their requirements, than the backup capabilities provided by the platform. 

ServiceNow often hosts sensitive and regulated data. It is also a business critical solution that organizations often rely upon to deliver services to customers and employees.

As such, organizations must ensure they have sufficient processes and solutions in place to mitigate the risk of data loss and disruption on the platform.

Table of contents:

  1. About ServiceNow’s Out-of-the-Box Backup Technology
  2. ServiceNow Backup Solutions: Types of Data Backup
  3. Backup Solutions for ServiceNow: Storage Options
  4. Other Backup Considerations
  5. Take Control of Your ServiceNow Backups
Backup Solutions for ServiceNow: The Best Options for Your Business

About ServiceNow’s Out-of-the-Box Backup Technology 

ServiceNow’s out-of-the-box backup (OOTB) capabilities automatically generate backups of data within the user’s instance. 

Full backups (direct to disk) are created weekly and retained for 14 days. Differential backups are made daily and stored for 7 days.

The backups are supported by ServiceNow’s Advanced High Availability (AHA) architecture which involves storing data across data center pairs around the world.

The idea is that should one data center experience disruption, there is another copy of data available elsewhere.

Limitations of ServiceNow’s In-Built Backup Technology

While the in-built backup capabilities help to mitigate the potential for data loss, the ServiceNow approach is not without its flaws. 

Firstly, customers do not have any control over backup schedules and users cannot create or request on-demand backups when required.

Furthermore, ServiceNow’s OOTB backup capabilities do not support partial instance restoration. 

When restoring with ServiceNow’s in-built backup and restore capabilities, the entire instance must be restored, in a time-consuming procedure that requires disruptive instance downtime.

ServiceNow Backup Solutions: Types of Data Backup

There are a number of different types of backups. Some of which are provided by ServiceNow and mentioned briefly earlier in this post.

The types of backup include:

Full backup: A full backup involves creating a copy of all data within a solution.

Having a full backup available can benefit recovery time as each backup is self-sufficient and data does not have to be gathered from multiple sources.

Full backups require more storage space and take longer to complete than other types of backup, so organizations typically set a periodic backup schedule that works for them.

For users reliant on ServiceNow’s OOTB backups, ServiceNow sets the schedule on the user’s behalf and only retains backups for 14 days.

Incremental backup: An incremental backup creates a copy of the data that has changed since the last backup. This includes full backups and subsequent incremental backups.

Incremental backups copy significantly less data than a full backup so both speed and storage benefit.

With incremental backups, recovery time can be longer as multiple backup files may need to be accessed to restore a complete dataset.

Differential backup: In terms of the amount of data backed up, differential backup lie somewhere between full and incremental backups.

With a differential backup, all data created or changed since the last full backup is included. Whereas incremental backups will not include changes covered by the last incremental backup, a differential backup will.

This means that a differential backup would essentially be the same as the first incremental backup up made.

Take a daily backup schedule where all backups are made at noon, for example. If a full backup is created on Monday at noon, Tuesday’s incremental or differential backup would reflect all changes that happened since Monday at noon.

The following incremental backup on Wednesday, would include only changes made since Tuesday at noon.

In contrast, Wednesday’s differential backup would include all changes to data made since Monday at noon.

Backup Solutions for ServiceNow: Storage Options

One of the most significant factors in selecting backup solutions for ServiceNow, is where backups will be stored.

The cost of storage, risk of data loss/exposure and more, are all key considerations to make when deciding how to store backups.

The most common backup storage options available to ServiceNow users include:

Cloud

Cloud storage solutions allow for backups to be stored by a third-party, benefitting users when disruptive events occur on the user’s side. 

For example, a fire or a ransomware attack affecting a localized, singular data center could lead to backups being lost and irretrievable. 

With cloud storage, backups are stored externally, so any disruptive events that affect the organization will not extend to affecting the backup.

Organizations benefit from better availability of backups as providing there is a means to connect to the internet, the backups should be readily available. 

ServiceNow’s own backup capabilities store backups in the cloud, benefiting their availability. However, users cannot control the backup schedule or restore independently without a lengthy process involving ServiceNow support.

Some third-party cloud storage providers charge based on usage. In this scenario, organizations that regularly create and store backups could experience high and escalating costs as they generate more data.

Where storage costs are a concern, ServiceNow users could leverage an off-platform archiving solution to reduce the amount of data included in a backup.

There are also cloud-storage backup solutions for ServiceNow that do not charge based on usage.

Hardware

Organizations with a means to extract ServiceNow data may decide to create and store their own backups in a local repository. 

This is particularly beneficial to organizations subject to strict data protection standards and regulation as the lengthy vendor vetting process dissuades organizations from pursuing vendor-managed cloud options. 

As the organization has total control over the backup in their local repository, they can retrieve the backup independent of vendor involvement. They could even use the data in backups to support various use cases including training AI models.

However, organizations that wish to store backups in a local repository require the infrastructure to do so.

Ideally, the organization needs to maintain additional sites in order to store multiple copies of backups so that they are insulated from localized disruption such as floods, fires and other events. 

Redundancy and the Best of Both Worlds

The redundancy model for backups is not a “type” of storage for backups per say, but an approach to creating and storing backups. 

It involves creating multiple copies of backups and storing them across different repositories – and ideally, across different sites.

Essentially, the redundancy model can (and arguably should) use a combination of cloud and local storage for better protection against data loss and availability of backups. 

ServiceNow users that decide to utilize backups other than the ServiceNow provided backup capabilities are inherently using the redundancy model. 

The ServiceNow platform creates weekly backups and stores them in a cloud that ServiceNow owns and maintains. 

Any user-introduced backup technology would then operate along with ServiceNow-created backups. 

The backups created by user-introduced backup solutions can then be stored locally, or in a vendor-managed cloud according to the organization’s preferences and/or requirements.

Other Backup Considerations

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

RPO refers to the maximum amount of data your business can afford to lose in the event of an incident. It indicates how frequently backups need to occur for an organization to avoid disruptive data loss.

For instance, an RPO of 24 hours means that backups should be performed at least once per day. In the worst case scenario, an organization could lose a full day’s worth of data if a failure were to occur just before the next backup was created.

Recovery Time Objective

RTO measures the maximum acceptable amount of time your systems can remain offline after an incident before it adversely impacts business. For example, an RTO of 12 hours means your systems must be back up and running within 12 hours.

The complexity of the recovery process, the extent of the incident, and the type of backup solution all influence the actual recovery time.

Scheduled and On-demand Backups

Scheduled backups automate the backup process at set intervals – such as daily, weekly, monthly, etc – depending on the organization’s needs.

Regularly scheduled data backups enable organizations to maintain up-to-date copies of their data without manually triggering each process. This minimizes the risk of data loss due to human error or oversight.

With ServiceNow’s in-built backup capabilities, the user cannot define their own schedule but purpose-built backup solutions typically permit this.

An on-demand backup is initiated by the user as and when required. It benefits organizations that want to create a backup outside the predefined schedule, such as before a major system update.

While on-demand backups offer flexibility in timing, they should be used alongside, not in place of scheduled backups.

With ServiceNow’s in-built backup capabilities, the user cannot create backups on-demand, but some purpose-built backup solutions support this use case.

Restoration and Downtime

Many backup solutions require the affected solution to be taken offline in order to restore data. Depending on the downtime required, this may be incompatible with an organization’s RTO as the downtime could lead to missing the required recovery time.

ServiceNow’s in-built backup capabilities require instance downtime to complete the recovery process.

Fortunately, some backup solutions for ServiceNow allow users to continue working within ServiceNow throughout the process.

Take Control of Your ServiceNow Backups

ServiceNow customers must implement robust provisions for data backup and recovery to mitigate data loss risks and business disruption.

Though the Platform does not let users set their own backup schedules, backup on-demand, or restore without downtime, these capabilities are available from ServiceNow partner’s, Perspectium, via Snapshot.

Snapshot is a purpose-built, ServiceNow-native application that helps users overcome the limitations of ServiceNow’s in-built backup capabilities.

With Snapshot, users control what is backed up, when backups are created and how often they are created, meaning users can create as many backups as required, as often as required. Additionally, Snapshot-created backups for ServiceNow are retained indefinitely.

Want to learn more about Snapshot? Talk to our experts today!

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November 6, 2024     Zak Cole