How to Archive Historical ServiceNow Data

Organizations are encouraged to archive historical ServiceNow data to ensure instances maintain optimal performance. 

Table of Contents:

• Why Archive Historical ServiceNow Data?
• Archiving Historical Data With ServiceNow
• Limitations of Archiving with ServiceNow
• How to Archive ServiceNow Data Off-platform

Why Archive Historical ServiceNow Data?

ServiceNow instances are a repository of value-adding data. Organizations often use this data to improve internal processes and make informed business decisions.

However, the longer an instance runs, the more stale and/or obsolete data it accumulates. This makes it more difficult for organizations to retrieve and make use of value-adding data. 

Historical data is a common source of stale and obsolete data – especially for organizations without a strong data archiving process in place – making it a common target for archive events. 

While historical data may need to be retained for auditing and/or analysis in future, storing data with no immediate value in primary tables leads to performance issues, storage challenges, and increased costs. 

Therefore, organizations need a robust process and solution that ensures historical data can be preserved in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

• See also: ServiceNow Data Archiving – Best Practices

This comprehensive guide will explore the why, what, and how of archiving historical ServiceNow data.

Archiving Historical Data With ServiceNow

Organizations can archive historical data with ServiceNow’s default feature, Data Archiving. 

Though ServiceNow’s default archiving capabilities reduce table size, it is not a solution to reduce the total database size as archived records are still stored within the ServiceNow platform.

With ServiceNow Data Archiving, users can: 

Set up archive rules 

System Archiving includes numerous sample archive rules illustrating specific archive features. Users must go to All > System Archiving > Archive Rules and select New. They can add related records to the archive rule and view the estimated number of records the rule will impact.

• See also: ServiceNow Archive Rules Explained

Set up destroy rules 

Users can create a destroy rule to delete archived data and related records after a specified period. For this, they must navigate to All > System Archiving > Archive Destroy Rules. The next step is to click New and fill in the required form fields. 

Archive rules determine what data will be archived, and contrarily, destroy rules determine the conditions for deleting an archived record.

Both rules help create a systematic approach to archiving data and deleting archived data when the conditions established by the end-user are met. 

Limitations of Archiving with ServiceNow

There are a number of limitations with ServiceNow’s archiving feature. Firstly, it lets users archive records only once.

Secondly, ServiceNow imposes size limitations on archive tables based on the data’s size rather than the record count. This can be particularly challenging when dealing with large datasets, potentially impeding an organization’s archiving strategy. 

Additionally, data archived within ServiceNow can be difficult to retrieve and make use of when it is required. This is due to the broader limitations in extracting data from ServiceNow. 

This is a recurring pain point for various use cases, including data archiving and integrating ServiceNow with dedicated third-party solutions for advanced analysis, business intelligence, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. 

Because ServiceNow’s default archiving feature is that users can only archive the data within the “archive tables” of a ServiceNow instance, making such data available to third-party systems and the teams that use them is not easily done.

In ServiceNow, archived data remains isolated and inaccessible for use in external analysis tools and advanced analytics, limiting its utility for organizations seeking deeper insights. 

It also means that ServiceNow’s archiving feature is not a solution for managing storage, and avoiding incurring additional storage fees on the platform.

However, users can overcome all of the above limitations by utilizing a purpose-built archival solution, allowing them to archive historical ServiceNow data off-platform.

Archiving ServiceNow Data Off-platform with Perspectium

For organizations that require a more robust archiving solution and process, ServiceNow is partnered with Perspectium – an expert managed service for integrating, extracting and archiving ServiceNow data. 

Archive historical ServiceNow data without impacting performance

Perspectium provides Data Archive for ServiceNow – a purpose-built, ServiceNow-native application for archiving massive amounts of data off-platform, without impacting performance. 

Thanks to Data Archive for ServiceNow’s high-throughput data transfers, users can archive historical ServiceNow data in bulk, and quickly introduce a more robust archiving process, and benefit from increased capacity and system performance.

• See also: What is Data Archive for ServiceNow – Infographic

Archive historical ServiceNow data off-platform to improve data availability

With off-platform archiving, users can archive data into external repositories of their choice (cheaper storage options, local or cloud-based).

This improves data accessibility and self-service, allowing relevant stakeholders to retrieve archived data and feed it into third-party solutions for analytics, reporting, BI, ML, etc. 

By moving the data to an external repository, the archived data stays accessible to stakeholders within the data management system but remains protected from unnecessary modification. 

Archive historical ServiceNow data off-platform to avoid additional storage fees

Archiving off-platform also provides organizations with a more cost-effective means of preserving historical ServiceNow data.

Instead of the data remaining in ServiceNow – where additional storage costs can be incurred – the data is stored in an external repository where storing data is less costly. 

Perspectium’s Data Archive for ServiceNow allows users to:

• Archive a record multiple times and to their preferred external database.
• Archive historical ServiceNow data in bulk without impacting ServiceNow’s performance (Perspectium’s technology allows users to archive over 1 billion records per month with zero performance impact)
• Archive data securely with encryption, ensuring security both at rest and in transit.
• Maintain complete control over archived data through condition-based filtering.
• Archive historical ServiceNow data off-platform and avoid additional storage costs.

What Makes Perspectium Different? 

While there are a number of solutions that support archiving ServiceNow data, Perspectium solutions benefit from massive throughput, and an efficient architecture that does not impede ServiceNow’s performance. 

Created by David Loo, the founding developer of ServiceNow, Perspectium’s applications and services were tailor-made to extract massive amounts of ServiceNow data efficiently. 

Unlike most solutions, Perspectium does not require API or web services to extract ServiceNow data. API and web services based integrations compete for ServiceNow’s system resources to initiate transfers and are often the source of debilitating system performance.  

Instead, Perspectium can leverage its position as a ServiceNow-native application and initiate data transfers using far more efficient Push Technology.

This helps preserve the Platform’s performance whether a user is moving records in bulk for archiving, or other use cases such as analytics and business intelligence. 

Speaking to the pedigree of the solution and service, ServiceNow themselves use Perspectium internally for their own data extraction and integration requirements. 

Talk to our experts today to learn more about Perspectium’s off-platform archiving!