Troubleshooting case where all users experience performance issues on a specific application

If slow performance is experienced by all users and affects a specific application in the instance, see below for symptoms, causes, and ways to resolve the issue.

Symptoms

• The instance is slow and sometimes unavailable. 
• Semaphores appear to be locked or have long running times.
• The Pool Sweeper cannot release long running database connections.
• Low or out of memory alerts appear.
• Localhost logs display a slow business rule message.
• Loading a form takes too long or freezes before any interaction is possible.
• High amount of browser time indicated in the Client Transaction Timing widget or log for a particular form transaction.

• Inefficient queries executing in the database (MySQL).
• Inefficient business rules being processed in the application.
• Too many asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) calls generated by client scripts.

Note: Prerequisite: Prior to completing the following steps, collect the necessary information needed to troubleshoot the performance issue. For more information, see Gathering node data via stats.do and threads.do

To troubleshoot slow performance experienced by all users on a specific application:

1. Verify that there are no inefficient business rules being processed in the application. For more information, see Identifying and addressing inefficient business rules.
2. Verify that a client script is not making too many asynchronous AJAX calls. For more information, see Identifying and reducing synchronous AJAX calls generated by client scripts.

The ServiceNow internal role is required to complete the following steps:

1. Verify that there are no inefficient queries running against the database. For more information, see Identifying and tuning inefficient queries executing in the database (MySQL).

If the issue continues to exist after trying the above steps:

• Clearly identify the issue or question.
• Search in the ServiceNow product documentation for your issue.
• Search for your issue in the ServiceNow Community.
• Post a question on the ServiceNow Community forums. New users must create an account on the ServiceNow Community in order to post.
• Open an incident via email or the online Technical Support system.
• Contact the Technical Support team.

For more information on related topics, review the following ServiceNow product documentation pages:

• Platform Performance
• Thread Performance Monitoring
• System Diagnostics Page

For more topic-related issues, review the following Knowledge Base article:

• Troubleshooting slow performance