Managing API Consumption for ServiceNow Backups

In the Options menu, you can set the API Consumption limit. Admins are allowed to set limits for API consumption for data and attachments downloaded via the REST API.

Limit

The API Consumption limit options are:

  • Limit the number of records for each API request: The maximum number of records retrieved per API request. This will help to avoid connection timeouts from the ServiceNow instance, and increase the performance of backup run times. By default, 4,000 records/request are retrieved. The maximum number of records/request retrieved is 8,000.
  • Maximum number of tables to process in parallel: The maximum number of distinct table requests to process in parallel. This will help run backups faster. For example, Incident, Change_Request, Problem. By default, 6 tables/request are processed. The maximum number of tables/request processed at a time is 15.
  • API version: Select the REST API version to use when backing up data from your instance. By default, version V2 is selected.

We intelligently separate the download of data from the attachment table during a given backup. Since data & attachments only need to be downloaded once (unless changed), the backup service checks for the difference between data and new/changed data in your environment. This includes items such as Attachments, and Workflows.