MID Servers should be a member of a cluster Product Success Playbook Mid Server should be a member of cluster A step-by-step guide to analyze and manage MID Server cluster configuration Table of Contents Summary Goal of this Playbook Audience Problem Overview Executive Summary How this playbook can help you achieve business goals How this playbook is structured Problem Analysis Upstream Causes Downstream Consequences Impact on Your Business Engagement Questions Remediation Plays Summary Play 1: Review your data Play 2: Analyze Play 3: Configure a MID Server cluster Data Governance References Summary Goal of this Playbook Understanding the issue of the MID Servers not being in cluster and helps in identifying and remediating the MID Server configuration. Details about this playbook Author Thiyagarajan J Reviewer Douglas Schulze Date 06/02/2023 Addresses HSD # HSD0010140 Applicable ServiceNow Releases All Releases Prerequisites Time Required Approximately 2 to 16 hours ([depending on your environment) Audience Discovery AdministratorServiceNow Administrator Problem Overview A MID server cluster is a group of multiple MID servers that work together to provide redundancy and improve performance. Due to various causes a MID Server may go down or have degraded performance. If the MID Server is standalone (not in cluster), this may result in the applications (Ex: Discovery, Event Management) using the MID Server getting adversely affected. By utilizing the cluster feature for MID Servers, you can improve the performance as well as continue to operate even while a MID server is having issue. Executive Summary How this playbook can help you achieve business goals MID Servers facilitate communication and data movement between ServiceNow instance and external applications, data sources, and services. Improving the MID Server availability & performance can help in keeping the data in ServiceNow current & also able to execute automations on external systems. This will help your support teams to be able to get alerted quickly and be able to take swift actions. How this playbook is structured This playbook has 3 plays, Play 1 (a review data play) lists the MID Servers which are not in cluster.Play 2 (an analyze play) analyzes the MID Server usage statistics to determine the appropriate clusterPlay 3 (a fix play) configure a MID Server cluster. Problem Analysis Upstream Causes MID Server clustering is not practiced, and team is not aware of this featureIndividual teams create MID Servers for their own requirements. Governance process is not setup for monitoring, identification and setup of the MID Server clusterMID Servers are configured for different capabilities and hence clustering is not possibleAdditional operational cost for maintaining more MID servers.Failover is configured using third party clustering software at the operating system level Downstream Consequences Data Consequence Data updates from external systems are impacted resulting in stale or missing data. This may affect data including, CMDBEventsData updates through integrationsUser & Group import(Directory systems) Operation Consequence Operational teams may face issue in troubleshooting due to missing or stale data.Due to impact on integration hub automated remediations may not work resulting operational teams spending manual effort. App Consequence SecOps applications can fail to identify risks in a timely manner.ITOM Visibility (Discovery, Service Mapping) may fail resulting in stale CMDBITOM Health (event, metric intelligence) may not receive alerts and metric information.Integration Hub activities and flows may fail.Password reset integration with directory system may fail.Web Services integrations that utilize a MID Server could be impacted by Down MID Servers. Impact on Your Business MID Servers failures could impact your business outcomes depending on which ServiceNow applications are running. Some examples follow. Lower MTTR Data ValidationData Completeness Incident Reduction Service AwarenessData AccuracyIntegrity of Relationships Increase Operational Visibility Process AlignmentLifecycle Management Audit/Compliance System IntegrityData GovernanceProcess Gaps Service Level Awareness Data IntegrationModel Management Process Automation Service AwarenessData AccuracyIntegrity of Relationships Better User Experience Platform AwarenessModel Management Engagement Questions: Consider the answers to these questions: Does your ServiceNow governance process contain process for MID Servers as wellDo you have a centralized team who manages MID servers? Remediation Plays SummaryThe table below lists and summarizes each of the remediation plays in the playbook. Details will be included later. Play Name Review your data What this play is about This will list all the MID servers which are not in cluster Required tasks Run the fix script and check the output Analyze Play What this play is about This play will give the knowledge about MID server’s memory usages, hardware utilization, timing which helps to create MID server cluster. Required tasks Go through the MID Server Dashboard Fix Plays What this play is about This play helps in configuring a new MID Server cluster Required tasks Follow the steps provided in the play Data Governance What this play is about This play will help to monitor & manage MID Server cluster configuration Required tasks Regularly follow the steps provided in the play Play 1 - Review your data. What this Play is about This play will help to list the MID servers which are not in cluster. Required tasks: Download the Analysis Script and import as a Fix Script.Navigate to System Definition > Fix Scripts. Locate the Query Script - MID Server which doesn't have cluster.Click Run Fix Script and then Proceed. There is no need to use the background option here. The output will provide the list of all the MID Servers in your environment which are not in any cluster Play 2 - Analyze What this Play is about This play helps to understand the MID server usage statistics which will help in deciding the appropriate type of MID server cluster Required tasks 1. Click on Navigator -> MID Server -> Dashboard. 2. Verify the MID servers CPU usages and Memory Used. 3. If CPU usages or Memory of the MID server usage is high, adding to a load balancing cluster will help to share the load with other MID Servers in the cluster 4. If the MID is not stable, it goes off frequently , adding to a cluster will help in getting the failover capability with the other MID servers in the cluster 5. If any MID Server which is used for Metric Intelligence, then these MID servers should be used under MID Server Distributed cluster. Note: Here is the reference link which helps to setup Mid Server Distributed cluster Play 3 – Configure a MID Server cluster What this Play is about This play helps in creating MID Server cluster . Considerations while setting up MID server clusters are below, MID server with same capabilities, applications, ip ranges and host configurations to be grouped together for adding to the cluster. Co-locate Clustered MID Servers on the same SubnetDecide the type of clustering optimum for the requirement (Eg Discovery , Event Management may require load balancing and integration MID Servers may be configured as failover) MID servers may be added to both a load balanced and failover cluster at the same time.Load balancer cluster will also act as failover cluster. In case the MID server has specific for the devices not required to be part of load balancer cluster type.Do not make a MID Server part of multiple load balancing clusters. Including a MID Server in multiple MID Server load-balancing clusters may cause Discovery authentication or timeout errors. Below are steps to configure both load balancing & failover clusters Cluster Type: Load Balancing Required tasks Click on Navigator -> MID Server -> Clusters. Click New and give appropriate name and select the cluster type as “Load Balancing.” Open the created MID server cluster and go to “Include Mid Server” related list and click on Edit. From the Edit Member screen add the Mid Server from left to right and click the save button. After saving MID servers are added to the clusters. Please adapt the order number from the default “100” to the appropriate order (100, 200…) Cluster Type: Failover What this Play is about This play supports configuring MID server cluster for failover cluster type. Required tasks Click on Navigator -> MID Server -> Clusters. Click New and give appropriate name and select the cluster type as “Failover”. Based on the analysis, the MID Server has the same capabilities which fail frequently and will be included in the Failover Mid Server cluster.Steps 4,5,6 will be repeatable as Load Balancing cluster type. This will create the failover MID Server cluster and the appropriate mid are added in the failover cluster type. Data Governance What this Play is about This play provides an approach for monitoring and managing the MID Server in cluster. Required tasks MID Server governance process team to be set up for periodic maintenance of MID Servers and it’s clusters.Rerun Play 1,2,3 periodically to check the MID Servers list and adding to the MID Severs in cluster mode.Analyze the MID Servers usages and make the decision for making MID Servers in cluster.Use the fix plays provided in this playbook to get the MID Servers list which are not in cluster. References Configure MID Server cluster Here is the reference: Configure a MID Server cluster. Congratulations You have completed this Product Success Playbook.