Solution Overview Template

Updated: June 2022

Asset number: 0002510

Table of Contents
Introduction...............................................................................................................................................................3
Platform....................................................................................................................................................................3
Logical Overview..................................................................................................................................................3
Instances................................................................................................................................................................4
Security.................................................................................................................................................................4
Single Sign-On (SSO)...........................................................................................................................................4
IP Address Access Controls..................................................................................................................................5
VPN.......................................................................................................................................................................5
Mid Server.............................................................................................................................................................6
Integrations...............................................................................................................................................................7
Data Consumption.................................................................................................................................................7
Data Out................................................................................................................................................................8
Bi-directional/One Way Integrations....................................................................................................................8
Change Control.....................................................................................................................................................9
ServiceNow Backup Policy..................................................................................................................................9
ServiceNow Disaster Recovery............................................................................................................................9

© 2022 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ServiceNow,
Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
Introduction
ServiceNow provides a scalable platform with baseline functionality to facilitate common processes ranging from IT
Service Management to Customer Service Management. ServiceNow can replace many services already used by an
organization to consolidate and streamline existing architecture as a platform. To achieve this, ServiceNow must
communicate and integrate with many internal as well as external solutions. This document outlines how the
architecture is set up in your organization for use in identifying dependencies, gaps, and efficiency gains.

Platform
Logical Overview
<A diagram should be added to this section depicting how the ServiceNow platform fits into your organization.
This should be maintained as your architecture changes.>

Logical ServiceNow overview example

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Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
Instances
The following instances may be available as part of the ServiceNow platform:

ServiceNow instances <examples>

Environment Instance Name Instance Link Intent/Description

<Sandbox> <SAND> <Standalone sandbox instance>

<Development instance to build

<Development> <DEV>
new functionality>

<Test instance for unit and

<Testing> <TEST>
integration testing>

<Test instance for user

<User Acceptance Test> <UAT>
acceptance testing>

<Productive ServiceNow
<Production> <PROD>
instance>

All instances are hosted in the [ServiceNow Data Center Primary] and [ServiceNow Data Center Primary] data
centers.

Security
ServiceNow’s baseline is 128bit SSL encryption for browser and web services access. By design no connection to
ServiceNow and between ServiceNow components is unencrypted. In addition, there is TLS enforced for email.

Single Sign-On (SSO)

SSO may be enabled on any ServiceNow Instance. Document the SSO configurations as part of your architecture.

SSO configurations

Instance Name Instance Link Endpoint IdP Token

<SAND>

<DEV>

<TEST>

<UAT>

<PROD>

IP Address Access Controls

IP Address Access Controls can be used to secure and restrict access to the hosted web application. Access will be
blocked on specific addresses or a range of addresses.

© 2022 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ServiceNow,
Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
IP address access controls

Environment Type (Allow/Deny) Range Start Range End Description

<DEV>

<TEST>

<UAT>

<PROD>

VPN
If a VPN is set up for your ServiceNow Instance you will want to include the diagram of how it is configured.

VPN architecture <example>

Mid Server
The Management, Instrumentation, and Discovery (MID) Server is a Java server that runs as a Windows service or
UNIX daemon. The MID Server facilitates communication and movement of data between the ServiceNow platform
and external applications, data sources, and services.

© 2022 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ServiceNow,
Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
The main purpose of the MID Server is to act as a gateway between the ServiceNow platform and your
organization’s Network. Every communication is established from the MID Server to the ServiceNow instance on a
secured 128bit HTTPS connection. The MID Server communicates for that purpose on the External Communication
Channel (ECC) Queue. The ECC Queue is normally queried, updated, and inserted into other systems. Each record
in the ECC Queue is a message, either from the ServiceNow instance to some other system (an output message), or
from some other system to the ServiceNow instance (an input message).

List of Mid Servers

Environment Host Location Network Operating System

<DEV>

<TEST>

<UAT>

<PROD>

General Architecture and functionality of the MID Server:

Mid Server architecture <example>

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Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
Mid Server architecture <example>

© 2022 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ServiceNow,
Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
Integrations
Data Consumption
As part of the architecture of ServiceNow, all data sources consumed by ServiceNow in support of process and
functionality should be included in this document. This is critical information when evaluating changes to both
ServiceNow and the source system.

Data sources <example>

Data Source
Environment Data Source Data Source Owner Data Source Usage
Description

<Provides User,
<Source of
Group, and Group
<PROD> <Active Directory> <IT Security> organization groups
Membership
and users>
information>

<Provides
Asset/CMDB
<Source of
information to
organization
<PROD> <SCCM> <Hardware Team> support core
Hardware and
processes (Incident,
Software information>
Problem, Change,
etc.)>

Data Out
As part of the architecture of ServiceNow, all data sources that consume data from ServiceNow should be included
in this document. This is critical information when evaluating changes to both ServiceNow and the source system.

Data out <example>

Environmen Source Consumed Consumed

Source Source Owner Used For
t Description By By Owner

<System of <Provided
record for data used in
<Incident <Enterprise <Enterprise
organization’s regulatory
<PROD> <Incident> Management Reporting Reporting
Incident reporting in
Process Owner> System> Team>
Management an external
Data> system>

<Provided
<System of
<Master data used to
<Configuration record for
<CMDB Data <Enterprise reconcile
<PROD> Management organization’s
Applications> Management Tools Team> external
Process Owner> Application
System> monitoring of
data>
applications>

Bi-directional/One Way Integrations

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Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
As part of the architecture of ServiceNow, all integrations performing actions in ServiceNow and/or ServiceNow
performing actions in an external system should be documented. This is critical information when evaluating
changes to both ServiceNow and the source system.

Integration <example>

Integration Integration
Environment Direction Used For
Name Owner

<System of record
<Integration is used to both create tasks
<Incident for organization’s
in ServiceNow from Jira and update the
<PROD> <Incident> Management Incident
Jira records upon updates in
Process Owner> Management
ServiceNow>
Data>

<Integration is used to create a Request

<Configuration <System of record
<CMDB from SharePoint with no need to provide
<PROD> Management for organization’s
Applications> information back to the source system
Process Owner> Application data>
upon creation>

Change Control
Changes to the architecture should follow a Change Management Process. This ensures impact of a change is
evaluated and communicated to key stakeholders. Upon completion of an architecture change
(adding/removing/updating dependencies), the document should be updated to reflect the new architecture.

ServiceNow Backup Policy

ServiceNow maintains seven daily and three weekly backups on disk. The backup data never leaves the ServiceNow
data centers. Backups are taken in both data centers on all customer instances including sub-production and
production instances.

Nightly backups are kept for seven days in each data center and each mirrored data center serves as the disaster
recovery repository for its counterpart. Weekly backups are retained for 30 days.

It is important to note the primary recovery method of a production instance is to use the High Availability replica.

The backups are used as a secondary recovery mechanism.

ServiceNow Disaster Recovery

In the event of a crisis or extended outage, the ServiceNow NOC engages the Crisis Management Team to determine
whether to initiate the disaster recovery process. If the decision is made, the restoration process involves the
following:
 Provision new instance to point to replica DB
 Repoint DNS

© 2022 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ServiceNow,
Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.