How to resolve max failure threshold errors in CMDB Health Dashboard - Support and Troubleshooting

How to resolve max failure threshold errors in CMDB Health Dashboard .ns-kb-css-body-editor-container { p { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, #000000); } span { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, #000000); } h2 { font-size: 24pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } h3 { font-size: 18pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } h4 { font-size: 14pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } a { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #00718F); } a:hover { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #024F69); } a:target { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #032D42); } a:visited { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #00718f); } ul { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; } li { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; } img { display: ; max-width: ; width: ; height: ; } } When the number of configuration items (CIs) failing a health metric reaches the configured failure threshold (default is 50,000), the system stops processing that metric for the current cycle. The metric status in the CMDB Health Metric Status [cmdb_health_metric_status] table is set to Max Failures, and no aggregated health score is generated for that metric. Processing is attempted again in the next scheduled cycle. If the data hasn’t changed, the same thing happens again.

This article focuses on identifying and resolving the underlying causes to improve CMDB health long term rather than increasing the failure threshold to bypass these errors.

Before you begin This article is organized by the three Health metrics: Completeness, Correctness, and Compliance. Go to the section for the affected metric to identify the cause of the max failure error, determine which resolution approach applies to your environment, and follow the steps to resolve.

Access the Health Dashboard from CMDB Workspace. The legacy Health Dashboard is deprecated.

Required roles: Beginning with the Australia release, you need to have the sn_cmdb_admin role to access and modify health configuration settings. In releases before Australia, the itil_admin role is required. Identify the root cause Before implementing a fix, identify what is causing the failures. The diagnostic approach is the same for Completeness, Correctness, and Compliance metrics.

From the Health Dashboard, select the metric card (Completeness, Correctness, or Compliance) to display the failure scorecards. Select the failing scorecard for the affected class to open the list view of failures. Select the info icon to view the failure description and identify the cause, such as a missing field, duplicate CI, orphan condition, stale data, or failing audit. Look for common patterns in the failures to determine the most effective resolution approach. Adding a discovery source column helps identify which data source is providing the problematic data.

Completeness Max failures for Completeness appear when required or recommended attributes are missing across a large number of CIs. The failure scorecards display the classes with the most issues.

Remove unnecessary attributes from health configuration When to use : An attribute does not make business sense as required or recommended, especially if it is missing across many CIs.

Go to CI Class Manager. Select Hierarchy and select the affected class. Select the Health tab. For recommended attributes : In the Completeness section, locate the problematic attribute and remove it. For required attributes : Go to the Attributes section, sort by mandatory fields, and set the attribute to not mandatory. Save and run the Completeness job again. Example of required attributes

Example of recommended attributes

Fix data source configuration When to use: The attribute should be present but is missing due to data source configuration issues. This method addresses the root cause by ensuring that the data source properly captures and populates the required information.

Identify the discovery source providing the data. Go to the data source or connector configuration. Verify the mapping configuration for the specific attribute. Verify the attribute is mapped correctly from the source system. Modify the mapping configuration if needed to properly capture and populate the data.

Use inclusion rules to exclude classes When to use : Certain classes are expensive to process or do not contain valid data for health assessment.

Create inclusion rules to exclude the problematic class from health computation. Configure the rule to skip evaluation of classes that consistently fail.

Correctness—Duplicates When you see max failures for duplicates, examine the top 10 classes displayed in the failure scorecards.

Use dedupe template remediation When to use : You have legitimate duplicate CIs that need to be resolved.

Look for dedupe tasks attached to the duplicate CIs To resolve the duplicates, use deduplication template remediation . Use (global) inclusion rules When to use : Certain classes consistently have duplicate issues that are difficult to address. Apply inclusion rules at the global level to exclude classes that cannot be easily resolved.

Correctness—Orphan CIs For orphan CI max failures, examine the scorecard to identify which class has the highest number of orphan issues. The failure description explains why each CI is failing the orphan check.

Adjust orphan conditions When to use : The orphan rule conditions need to be refined to reduce false positives.

Go to CI Class Manager . Select the class with the most orphan failures from the scorecard. Select the Health tab. In the Health section, select Correctness . Review the orphan rule and assess the defined conditions. Adjust the condition if it does not make sense or modify it to reduce failures.

Use inclusion rules When to use : Certain classes cannot be easily resolved or orphan checking is not meaningful. Apply inclusion rules at the global level to exclude those classes.

Correctness—Stale CIs When dealing with staleness max failures, select the stale CIs scorecard to identify the class with the highest number of stale CIs.

Adjust the staleness threshold When to use : The staleness threshold is too restrictive for your environment.

Go to CI Class Manager . Select the affected class. Go to Health > Correctness > Staleness Rule . Adjust the effective duration to reduce the number of threshold violations.

Address data source issues When to use : Data sources are not running frequently enough or have connectivity issues.

Review the source providing the data from the Health Dashboard results. Verify when the source last ran and why the CI is not getting discovered. Rerun the connector to refresh the data and reduce staleness failures Use inclusion rules When to use : Certain classes do not need staleness monitoring or are intentionally static. Create inclusion rules to exclude the class from staleness evaluation.

Compliance Compliance max failures differ from Completeness and Correctness because Compliance data comes through audits, desired state, and scripted audits. The failure description for each CI shows which specific audit is causing the failure.

Adjust audit conditions This is the primary method for resolving Compliance failures because it addresses the root cause.

From the left navigation, select Audits . Find the specific audit causing the failures (identified from the CI failure description). Go to the audit template. Review the certification conditions defined in the template. Adjust the conditions to reduce failures while maintaining Compliance requirements.

Modify audit filter conditions When to use : Too many CIs are being evaluated and you need to reduce the scope.

Go to the audit template causing the failures. Open the filter condition within the template. Review the number of records currently matching. Add more specific conditions to reduce the number of CIs evaluated. Save the configuration. Last resort: Increase the failure threshold Use this method only when the resolution approaches in the previous sections are not feasible. Increasing the threshold is computationally expensive and can affect system performance.

From the left navigation, go to Health Preferences . Select Health Metrics . Select the appropriate metric type (Completeness, Correctness, or Compliance). Select the submetric. For Completeness, select Recommended or Required to access the corresponding threshold. Locate the failure threshold setting and increase the value. Save the configuration. Rerun the health job. Warning : Increasing the failure threshold beyond 500,000 may reduce overall performance. There is no maximum threshold value, but high values are not recommended. Address the underlying data issues rather than increasing the threshold to bypass max failure errors.

Xanadu-specific behavior (resolved in Xanadu Patch 1) A change introduced in Xanadu GA set a default upper limit of 100,000 for failure thresholds. This cap overrode any higher threshold value configured in Health Preferences. If you upgraded to Xanadu with thresholds set higher than 100,000, the upgrade capped them at 100,000.

The system property glide.cmdb.health.max_failure_threshold was available to bypass this limit by setting a higher value. If the property did not exist, it could be created in the System Properties [sys_properties] table.

This behavior and the associated property were removed in Xanadu Patch 1. If you are running Xanadu before Patch 1, upgrade to Patch 1 or later to restore expected threshold behavior.

General guidelines Investigate the specific cause of failures before increasing the threshold. Address data source issues and configuration problems as the primary resolution approach. Use threshold increases as a temporary measure while working on permanent solutions. Consider the performance impact of high failure thresholds and inclusion rules. Review and clean up stale, duplicate, or noncompliant CI data regularly to maintain healthy threshold levels. Related links Understand CMDB Health Dashboard score calculation changes CMDB Health Dashboard has moved to the CMDB Workspace View CMDB Health Dashboard Configure CMDB Health