MID Server hosts should have multiple CPUs

Product Success Playbook

A step-by-step guide to analyze and correctly configure MID Servers

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: Fix Play

Play 3: Fix Play

Data Governance

Summary

Goal of this Playbook

This playbook helps in analysing and resolving low CPU core count with MID Server

Details about this playbook

Author

Bibu Elias Punnachalil

Reviewer

John (Johnnny) Walker

Date

09/13/2022

Addresses HSD #

HSD0010808

Applicable ServiceNow Releases

All Releases

Prerequisites

N/A

Time Required

Approximately 1 to 2 hours (depending on your environment)

Audience

Discovery Administrator ServiceNow Administrator System Administrators

Problem Overview

MID Servers hardware specification recommends a quad core processor with a speed of 2 GHz or greater. MID Server uses multiple threads to perform the required actions. With a single CPU/core, the multiple thread capability of the (Java) MID Server is not effectively utilized and affects the overall MID Server performance which results in time outs and other data issues

Executive Summary

How this playbook can help you achieve business goals

This playbook helps with correctly configuring your MID Servers which in turn results in a more accurate and complete CMDB. This, in turn, promotes better visibility and management of all your IT Assets which support all of your business goals – whatever they may be

How this playbook is structured

This Playbook will guide you through 3 plays.

Play 1 (a review data play) helps you review MID Server CPU core counts within your instance Play 2 (remediation) provides the steps recommended to improve CPU utilization and performance Play 3 (a Data Governance play) lists the guidelines and processes for continuing to ensure your MID Server CPU utilization is optimal

Problem Analysis

Upstream Causes

Hardware specifications not provided/considered Perhaps a decision was made to replace your MID Servers with Virtual Machines and it was not well understood what the requirements were for this application Perhaps a development MID Server was somehow copied or promoted into Production

Downstream Consequences

Data Consequence

Stale CIs Missing Alerts Operation Consequence

Operational teams may require spending additional effort in troubleshooting discovery failures due to CPU issues Automated remediations may not get executed Slow data import processes ITOM Health integrations might not receive critical infrastructure events Trust in CMDB may be lost due to duplicate and missing CIs

App Consequence

SecOps applications can fail to identify risks in a timely manner ITOM Visibility (Service Mapping) could fail depending on available MID Servers for IP Ranges ITOM Health integrations relying upon data collectors could be failing entirely IntegrationHub activities and flows could be fail entirely for lack of a backup Web Services integrations that utilize a MID Server could be impacted by Down MID Servers

Impact on Your Business

MID Server CPU issues could impact your business outcomes depending on which ServiceNow applications these MID Servers support. Some examples follow.

Increased MTTR

ITOM Health depends on MID Servers for event data ingestion

CMDB Trust

ITOM Visibility depends on MID Servers to perform Discovery Schedules. The performance issues

Process Automation

Data Sources / Import Sets could be relying on your MID Servers IntegrationHub / ETL transforms could be reliant upon MID Servers

Engagement Questions:

Consider the answers to these questions:

Is there a process for MID Server provisioning? Are your MID Servers installed in physical servers or virtual machines? Do you review discovery performance?

Remediation Plays

Summary

The table below lists and summarizes each of the remediation plays in the playbook. Details are included later.

Play Name

Review your data

What this play is about

Review MID Server CPU core count

Required tasks

List MID servers with low CPU cores

Fix Play

What this play is about

Approach to fix MID Server CPU core count

Required tasks

Use the appropriate recommendations provided

Data Governance

What this play is about

Helps you establish standard operating procedures, as well as periodic data certification

Required tasks

Provides detailed advice, best practices and data audit instructions

Play 1 - Review your data

What this Play is about

Review MID Server CPU/core count

Required tasks

Click on Navigator  Discovery  MID Server  This will list all MID Servers. Change the filter condition to check for Host Core Count

The filtered list will show you the MID Servers which needs increase in CPU

Play 2 – Fix Play : Approach to fix MID Server CPU Core Count

What this Play is about

Below approaches can help fix issue with CPU core count

Required tasks

If MID Servers were added for testing purpose and is down/unused for a long duration, have them removed to prevent these getting used for production purpose For the virtual machines / cloud servers, more virtual CPUs can be added by System Administrators In case MID Server is on a physical server, discuss with system administrators for a hardware upgrade

Data Governance

What this Play is about

This play provides an approach for monitoring and managing the MID Server issues

Required tasks

Rerun Play 1 periodically to check for any new MID servers with low CPU core count Establish a process to review the MID Server performance and regular connect with System Administrators for optimizing the server specifications

Congratulations

You have completed this Product Success Playbook .