The HA setup is available only for the MAX Edition.
The SnowMirror server runs as a Java agent service in a customer’s local environment (Windows and Linux operating systems are supported). According to the replication jobs configured, it downloads data changes from a ServiceNow instance and updates the mirror database. No ServiceNow changes are needed; the mirror uses the out-of-the-box API available in every instance. The SnowMirror team guarantees that it will keep up with every new ServiceNow release. The only SnowMirror installation requirements are: A machine to install the agent, an existing database instance, and a ServiceNow user account with sufficient permissions.
SnowMirror Replica makes it easy to integrate ServiceNow data in reports on your own infrastructure. Connect your own reporting platforms and BI tools like Tableau, PowerBI, Cognos, Microsoft Reporting Services or SAP Business Objects to ServiceNow.
Store your ServiceNow data in on-premise databases like MySQL, MS SQL, PostgreSQL, or Oracle, in data lakes such as Snowflake, Redshift or Synapse, in cloud databases like Azure SQL or Amazon RDS for SQL Server. You can even store CSV data in Amazon S3 or Azure Storage
Leverage the mirror database to connect read-only integrations, integrate applications with a database on a local network, and improve integration architecture.
Ensure that your data complies correctly with local regulations. Store certain parts of the data in servers that you designate, keep data for the required amount of time, and maintain the data according to individual countries’ requirements.
Data is loaded from a ServiceNow instance and stored in a relational database such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server installed in a local environment, or in your own cloud using servers such as Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure SQL Server, in cloud data lakes such as Snowflake or Redshift, or even in storage such as Microsoft Azure Storage or Amazon S3.
ServiceNow customers process millions of records every day. SnowMirror was designed by ServiceNow experts with a focus on performance, and it has specific features no other tool can match. On the ServiceNow side, the footprint is very low, SnowMirror has no or very low impact on the ServiceNow instance performance, and is much smaller than live reporting or any live integration directly to ServiceNow.
Of all ServiceNow customers, 7 out of 10 need to work with their ServiceNow data outside of the cloud. About 80% of SnowMirror customers use their mirror database for reporting and analysis, using popular tools like Tableau, PowerBI, SAP Business Intelligence, Cognos, and many more. The remaining 20% of SnowMirror customers use it to simplify their integration architecture, for machine learning, compliance, backups, or disaster recovery.
All
MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL
All
All
N/A
Custom
Custom
N/A
Yes/Custom
All
2
2
All
Silver 8 x 5
Silver 8 x 5
Gold 8 x 5
Platinum 24 x 7
30 days
3 years
3 years
3 years
All prices are monthly excluding VAT or other taxes. Standard contract duration is 36 months or longer. Minimal contract lenght is 12 months.
All
All
Silver 8 x 5
30 days
All prices are monthly excluding VAT or other taxes. Standard contract duration is 36 months or longer. Minimal contract lenght is 12 months.
MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL
N/A
N/A
2
Silver 8 x 5
3 years
All prices are monthly excluding VAT or other taxes. Standard contract duration is 36 months or longer. Minimal contract lenght is 12 months.
All
Custom
2
Gold 8 x 5
3 years
All prices are monthly excluding VAT or other taxes. Standard contract duration is 36 months or longer. Minimal contract lenght is 12 months.
All
Custom
Yes/Custom
All
Platinum 24 x 7
3 years
All prices are monthly excluding VAT or other taxes. Standard contract duration is 36 months or longer. Minimal contract lenght is 12 months.
SnowMirror creates a ServiceNow read-replica in your own database. Having selected ServiceNow tables in your data center can have many benefits. These are the three most popular use cases:
SnowMirror creates a ServiceNow read-replica in your own database. Having selected ServiceNow tables in your data center can have many benefits. These are the three most popular use cases:
SnowMirror creates a ServiceNow read-replica in your own database. Having selected ServiceNow tables in your data center can have many benefits. These are the three most popular use cases:
SnowMirror creates a ServiceNow read-replica in your own database. Having selected ServiceNow tables in your data center can have many benefits. These are the three most popular use cases:
SnowMirror creates a ServiceNow read-replica in your own database. Having selected ServiceNow tables in your data center can have many benefits. These are the three most popular use cases:
SnowMirror creates a ServiceNow read-replica in your own database. Having selected ServiceNow tables in your data center can have many benefits. These are the three most popular use cases:
SnowMirror creates a ServiceNow read-replica in your own database. Having selected ServiceNow tables in your data center can have many benefits. These are the three most popular use cases:
Yes. If you need high availability there is a possibility to install several SnowMirror installations. Some of our customers even install one SnowMirror into their DRC centers. SnowMirror architecture is cluster-ready and if one node goes down the other node is still synchronizing the data. We usually support this kind of requirements individually and we cooperate on the customer cluster design.
The HA setup is available only for the MAX Edition.
No. The only mandatory requirement is to have a user account which has sufficient rights to access ServiceNow data and meta-data. However, if using the SOAP API, we recommend activating the Aggregate Web Services ServiceNow plug-in to improve the user experience, enable a few fancy features and add a small performance boost.
No. If you have several ServcieNow instances you have to install several SnowMirrors. The idea behind it is the same as for the MID servers.
Yes. And it is quite usual to run a mirror for a test ServiceNow instance and a development instance on one server. It is necessary to configure different ports and different Windows service names. Use the Custom Installation option if installing using the Windows installer. A similar approach applies to Linux systems.
SnowMirror in not resource intensive. It is a Java application running as a Windows service or a Unix daemon. It requires a server to be installed on. The server can be a small virtual or physical machine. The typical configuration is a dual core CPU server with 2 GB RAM and 5 GB HDD. We even recommend to install SnowMirror on the same machine as the ServiceNow MID server. You can save one server using this approach.
Read more about SnowMirror requirements in the admin guide: https://www.snow-mirror.com/doc/
The Aggregate Web Services plug-in is a small plugin adding the aggregate method into all direct web services in ServiceNow. SnowMirror is using this new operation to count the records to insert or update before the actual download starts. By activating the plugin the progress bars work better, the count buttons enable you to count records in tables and SnowMirror is able to optimize the downloading algorithm a bit.
The main database is the mirror DB where the ServiceNow data is being stored. However, SnowMirror requires to maintain its configuration in a second database. So-called config DB. The config DB is configured during the installation phase and it is using H2 embedded database by default. The mirror DB can be configured in SnowMirror Settings page.
See the picture of the whole SnowMirror architecture.
If your synchronization failed and you got an error similar to java.sql.BatchUpdateException: Data truncation, it can have two different root causes.
1) Something has changed on the ServiceNow side. Usually someone made a string field longer than before. For example your ServiceNow admin made incident short_description longer (max length) from 80 to 200. So it means the new incident subjects cannot fit into your varchar(80) in the mirror database. To fix this, either manually alter the mirror table (column) or re-create the whole synchronization and perform an initial data load.
2) ServiceNow does not always respect its own data constraints. E.g. try to synchronize the sys_perspective table and it fails by default because one column in this table is configured to have 40 chars as its max length however the longest string in the column has 125 characters by default. There is no other solution than to manually alter the mirror database table to reflect the real situation.
Auto Schema Update feature enables to modify the mirrored table automatically according to the changes on the ServiceNow side. If enabled all the table columns are being synchronized. If there is a new columns in ServcieNow, SnowMirror automatically adds it into the mirror table. The same applies for modified columns a removed ones.
ServiceNow enables to specify a parent for a table. It means all the columns in the parent table are used for the child table as well. For example the table task (parent) and incident (child). Many tables are derived from the task table. The whole CMDB is build on this inheritance design pattern. Etc.
SnowMirror enables two approaches when synchronizing inherited tables (e.g. incident)
1) Synchronize two tables. This is the way ServiceNow itself stores the data. You have to synchronize two tables (e.g. task and incident) and to obtain the incident record you have to join the tables using the sys_id primary key in both tables. The advantage of this approach is lower redundancy. If you are synchronizing several tables derived from the task table the situation is simpler to perform some type of queries.
2) Synchronize only one table with all parent inherited columns included. This is an approach that a typical user expects. To sync the data as it is displayed in the web application. Check the checkbox Include inherited columns in the synchronization settings to choose this approach.
To identify new or updated records in ServiceNow is a straightforward way. However to find the records deleted in a certain time window is not so simple. Most of the tables are audited so the default strategy search for deleted records in the system journals. You can choose different strategies if you need or if the table is not being audited. Truncate option means to perform Clean & Synchronize operation for every sync run (initial load every run). Diff is a good way to find the deleted records in a non-audited table and None ignores the deletes at all.
Please read more about the delete strategies in our user guide.
Please note that synchronization settings for Views do not contain the delete strategy choice at all. It always performs the Truncate option because there is no way how to achieve incremental updates.
SnowMirror does not access the database directly. ServiceNow does not allow neither customers not partners to access the underlying instance database. All the data is downloaded using the our-of-the-box API called Direct Web Services. Event the original ODBC driver uses this API which is the reason why the driver is so limited and slow.
SnowMirror distribution contains an optional ServiceNow dashboard application. If you have installed the update set into your ServiceNow instance enable this setting to start sending SnowMirror activity into the ServiceNow instance.
No. You pay only for every SnowMirror connected to your production ServiceNow instance. Test, UAT, development or sandbox instances are for free.
SnowMirror license is bound to a certain ServiceNow instance host name (e.g. yourcompany.service-now.com). So the ServiceNow host name you configure in Settings -> ServiceNow has to match the license host name. Please do not forget to restart SnowMirror after you change the instance in the Settings. In case of a trial license please feel free to generate yourself another trial license on our website if you need if for a different ServiceNow instance.
