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A Management, Instrumentation, and Discovery (MID) Server

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87 views

A Management, Instrumentation, and Discovery (MID) Server

Uploaded by

Josh Cn
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is a ServiceNow MID Server and how does it work?

A management, instrumentation, and discovery (MID) Server is a Java application that runs on a server on your local network.
Questions addressed: MID Servers facilitate communication and data movement between a single ServiceNow® instance and external applications,
data sources, and services.
Page 1:
What is a MID Server used for?
• What is a MID
MID Servers help you to control and secure how ServiceNow communicates with your organization’s systems, especially those
Server?
behind a firewall. This supports four primary use cases:
• What is a MID
Server used for?
• What are best 1 Integrations 2 Orchestration 3 Discovery 4 Language processing
practices for using Supporting LDAP, JDBC, Enabling orchestration Providing access to systems Running other types of code (PHP,
a MID Server? REST, and SOAP based with other systems via for traditional CI discovery Perl, Ruby, etc.) as a script on the
integrations to systems either workflow activities and/or to support discovery MID Server to interact with systems
Page 2:
on your intranet or IntegrationHub spokes needed for service mapping that require those languages
• How does a MID
Server work with
ServiceNow? What are best practices for using MID Servers?
Deploy on a Windows server – A Windows MID Server can perform discovery and automation on both Windows and Unix,
but a Linux MID Server can only perform operations on Unix.
If you have any questions
on this topic or you would
Task each MID Server with only a single use – For example, discovery, orchestration, etc.
like to be a contributor to
future ServiceNow best
Place MID Servers close (network-wise) to the internal resources they’re communicating with – This improves
practice content, please
contact us.
performance.

Cluster-like MID Servers – When set up in clustered groups, ServiceNow automatically balances the load on discovery
across the different MID Servers and they act as a failover for each other if one MID Server goes down. When setting this
up, also consider having a MID Server pair within the same cluster placed in different geographical locations to support
disaster recovery.
1 © 2021 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
What is a ServiceNow MID Server and how does it work? (Cont.)
How does a MID Server work with ServiceNow?
The MID Server runs as a Windows service or UNIX daemon within your organization’s network (behind the firewall) and is completely controlled by your
organization with local configuration files. It initiates communications with the ServiceNow instance via the MID Server External Communication
Channel (ECC) Queue:

1 The MID Server subscribes to the 2 If a job exists in the ECC 3 The MID Server 4 The MID Server reports
Asynchronous Message Bus (AMB) which Queue for that MID does the work the findings of the job
notifies the MID Server if there are jobs in Server, it sets the status to that’s requested. back to the ECC queue.
the ECC queue. "I'm working on it."

The MID Server also polls the ECC queue


on a regular interval defined in the
mid.poll.time.* The default is every 40
seconds (this is configurable). The End user
Servers
ServiceNow instance never initiates computer
ECC queue
communications with the MID Server.

*This is in place in case the AMB connection Firewall MID Server


gets disconnected.

Related resources Storage Network


• Product Docs – MID Server • How a MID Server can help you (video)
• Product Docs – Install a MID Server on Windows • Now Community – Best practices for MID Server
setup and tuning
• Product Docs – Install a MID Server on Linux
• ServiceNow security best practice guide: Key
• Product Docs – MID Server configuration elements to consider when securing your instance
• MID Server overview (video)

2 © 2021 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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