ServiceNow Data Archiving: Common Fears, Concerns and How to Resolve Them

A well-defined process for ServiceNow data archiving helps manage growing data volumes, improve ServiceNow’s performance and support organization’s efforts to comply with data regulations. 

Despite the benefits, many organizations associate a number of common fears and concerns with the process.

This article provides an overview of ServiceNow’s in-built archiving capabilities, the limitations, fears and concerns associated with them, and the solutions that help organizations overcome such issues. 

Table of contents:

1. ServiceNow Data Archiving: The Basics and Limitations
2. Common ServiceNow Data Archiving Fears and Concerns
3. How to Archive ServiceNow Data Off-platform

ServiceNow Data Archiving: The Basics and Limitations

What is Data Archiving?

Data archiving plays a key role in enterprise data management. The practice involves identifying and transferring “inactive data” to a location reserved for long-term storage – either “on-” or “off-platform.”

What is ServiceNow Data Archiving?

ServiceNow data archiving simply applies the practice of archiving data to the ServiceNow platform.

ServiceNow provides organizations with archival capabilities through its Archiving feature, allowing organizations to transfer data to archive tables within the platform (on-platform archiving). 

On-platform vs Off-platform Archiving

On-platform archiving

Solutions that support on-platform archiving simply move data from a part of the database that is in active use (i.e. table), to a part of the database that isn’t in active use.

Here, “active use” refers to sections of the database that are accessible to typical database queries.

The idea here is to improve the performance of a database and efficiency of queries, by reducing the amount of data any given query needs to process. 

It also helps to prevent the inadvertent deletion of data an organization wishes to – or is required to retain – as the data is no longer accessible within the actively used parts of the platform. 

Off-platform archiving

In contrast, off-platform archiving transfers data out of a platform/solution, and into an external data repository (database, data lake, data warehouse etc).

This provides the same benefits as on-platform archiving in improving query performance and reducing the risk of data loss. However, off-platform archiving can also result in better performance gains by reducing the total load of data the platform has to store. 

It also allows organizations to move data into solutions purpose-built for storage where storage is cheaper, data retrieval is more efficient, and access to, and availability of data can be better governed.

Off-platform archiving is not available within ServiceNow’s default archiving feature. However, it can be enabled using the ServiceNow-native application, Data Archive. 

Other key definitions:

• Active data: Data that is currently, or could be in use or updated to support an enterprise’s operations and services.
• Inactive data: Data that is not, and will not be in use in the near-future, but is retained for future use, compliance audits or other use cases. 
• Data retention policy: A data retention policy outlines the conditions where an organization should keep data, why, for how long, and the process(es) for disposing of it.

Why is ServiceNow Data Archiving Important? 

As ServiceNow generates a lot of data, the practice of data archiving is particularly relevant to the platform and its users. 

Organizations may retain ServiceNow data for use cases including analysis, compliance/auditing, reporting, and more. 

Unchecked data growth will eventually hinder platform performance, slow queries, complications in compliance and data management, and a poor user experience.

As such, organizations need a way to effectively manage growing ServiceNow data volumes to ensure degrading platform performance does not cause disruption. 

Related post: ServiceNow Data Archiving Best Practices

What Do the ServiceNow Data Archiving Capabilities Include? 

The ServiceNow platform ships with its own (limited) archiving capabilities. It includes: 

• On-platform archiving: Transfer inactive data from a primary table to an archive table.
• Archive rules: Define conditions in which data should be archived. Archive rules can be run manually, or automatically as a scheduled job that by default, repeats at an hourly interval. 
• Destroy rules: Define how long archived data should be kept before it is automatically deleted. 

What Is Missing from ServiceNow’s Data Archiving Capabilities?

• Off-platform archiving: ServiceNow only supports on-platform archiving, meaning archived data is only moved to archive tables and still stored on the platform.
• Archiving records multiple times: ServiceNow’s data archiving feature limits users to archiving each table record once only. 
• Access to archived data limited to platform users: Access to archive tables is governed by Access Control List Rules. By default, these rules match the archived data’s table of origin. While this can be changed, anyone wishing to access data within ServiceNow’s archive tables will need a ServiceNow license. 

Common ServiceNow Data Archiving Fears and Concerns

Data archiving is a proven way to reduce database footprint and eliminate performance bottlenecks. 

However, the limitations of ServiceNow’s own archiving feature has led to a number of common fears and concerns

Fear #1: Storage

Archiving data will lead to exceeding ServiceNow storage limits and additional charges

ServiceNow’s data retention policy is to charge additional fees for users exceeding their contractual storage limits. 

As ServiceNow’s archiving feature does not move data out of the platform, it also contributes to users’ total storage consumption. Because of this, some organizations opt to delete data, when it may have served them better to archive it.

The Solution

Of course, organizations could revisit their internal data retention policy and take a more aggressive approach in identifying data for deletion. 

However, simply using a solution that can archive ServiceNow data in external repositories would free up far more storage space, whilst still being able to retain data that may be useful in the future. 

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

Fear #2: Compliance

Restoring archived data will be difficult should it be needed again in the future

As one of the leading reasons why organizations archive data, regulatory compliance should be a factor organizations consider when archiving ServiceNow data. 

Many organizations have a team dedicated to compliance that works with data from numerous solutions. It is unlikely that employees belonging to the compliance team have a license to access those solutions directly.

Therefore, retrieving archived data from ServiceNow in support of an audit (or other regulatory requirement), first requires a ServiceNow user to retrieve, then export the data to share it with the team responsible for regulatory compliance.

The Solution

Sharing login credentials and licenses is an ill-advised and insecure practice. As such, organizations should ensure they have an efficient process to retrieve archived, regulatory compliance-bound data. 

Alternatively, an archiving solution that can utilize an external repository for storage can make the processes of retrieving archived data far more efficient, allowing controlled, self-service access to compliance teams via a storage solution optimized for enterprise-wide use.

Fear #3: Time

Getting started with archiving is too time-consuming

Creating a custom data archiving and retention policy from scratch might be overwhelming for teams already facing a time and resource crunch. 

Owing to this extensive process, some organizations opt to take an aggressive approach to deleting records, in order to accommodate present needs and storage concerns. 

There is also the time it takes to complete an archiving job to consider. Organizations that routinely need to archive lots of data, or have an initial requirement to archive large volumes of ServiceNow data may have concerns about the speed in which their solution replicates data within an archive. 

The Solution

In the era of data regulations and data-driven business, organizations can’t afford to neglect creating a data retention policy. 

Organizations that can archive ServiceNow data externally can avoid situations where they are under immediate pressure to relieve space. Their initial approach to archiving data can be broad, encompassing data the organization may decide to purge at a later date. 

And without the pressure of needing to free up storage space immediately, organizations can ensure their data retention policy can be well thought out, iterated over time and applied retrospectively to existing, archived data.

Organization’s with lots of ServiceNow data must also consider the throughput capabilities of archiving solutions, and prioritize on-boarding solutions that can efficiently transfer large data volumes without causing performance issues in ServiceNow.

How to Archive ServiceNow Data Off-platform

So it is clear then, that archiving ServiceNow data off-platform helps organizations overcome concerns relating to storage, regulatory compliance, time and more.

But how – if ServiceNow’s archiving feature does not permit it – can organization’s enable off-platform archiving for ServiceNow? 

Enter Perspectium’s Data Archive.

An officially recognised ServiceNow partner and data replication solution provider, Perspectium helps organizations take control of their ServiceNow data. 

Its Data Archive application offers multiple benefits, including some benefits missing from ServiceNow’s capabilities:

• High-throughput archiving (replicate +20 million records per day without performance issues)
• Secure archiving with end-to-end encryption
• Dynamic, condition-based logic for to automate the archival process
• Archive records multiple times
• Archive attachments alongside records

Want to learn more about Perspectium’s Data Archive? Talk to us today!