Troubleshooting general performance issues on all applications

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

Symptoms

When users report performance problems, slowness, or interrupted access on all applications, there are a number of possible symptoms:

• Transactions take longer than expected. 
• Unable to connect to the instance. 
• Low or out-of-memory alerts appear.
• Some Java applications use a lot of memory compared to native applications.
• Program absorbs more and more system memory as it runs.
• Stats and threads are accessible, but the user interface is not.

Any of the following issues can be a cause, or contribute to the performance:

• There is no network connectivity. 
• Network issues exist between the instance and user.
• The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) memory utilization level is high or the memory heap is not big enough to store all data. 
• A large number of calls are made to the database, which causes high disk input/output (I/O) on the database server.
• The central processing unit (CPU) load on the server is too high.
• There is a high level of transaction concurrency.

To troubleshoot slow performance experienced by all users on all applications:

1. Test the network connectivity to the instance and verify that there are no existing issues. For more information, see Managing network connectivity issues.  
2. Verify that the instance is not running out of JVM memory. For more information, see Identifying abnormal JVM memory utilization.
3. Verify that the instance is not experiencing high concurrency. For more information, see Identifying high transaction concurrency. 

1. Verify that the disk I/O does not indicate overuse or high levels of saturation. For more information, see Identifying high disk I/O on the database server.
2. Verify that there are sufficient CPU resources to satisfy demand. For more information, see Identifying high CPU utilization on the server.  

If the issue continues to exist after following the steps in this article:

• 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 product documentation pages:

• Troubleshooting Performance
• Monitoring Performance on Threads
• Running System Diagnostics

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

• Troubleshooting slow performance