Guidance for System Reliability and Stability

Read Cherwell guidance for optimizing your CSM system for best performance and stability.

Performance

  • Best Practices

    For best results, periodically review performance best practices to analyze and troubleshoot performance issues. See Best Practices for Performance.

  • Business Objects

    Learn how to prevent long load times for Business Object records. See Business Object Performance.

  • Relationships

    Relationships provide a powerful way to pull record data together in meaningful ways. Learn how to ensure your relationships meet the needs of your users without impacting performance. See Relationships and Performance.

  • Automation Processes

    Because Automation Processes rely on Business Object logic, be sure to optimize configurations that might impact performance. This is especially important in high-load systems that have a large number of concurrent users or a high rate of record creation and updates. See Performance Considerations for Automation Processes.

    Also, learn about how Automation Processes are queued and run. See Automation Process Workflow.

  • Cherwell REST API

    Learn how to resolve poor performance with the Cherwell REST API. Examples of poor performance might be API calls, such as the first call made to CSM, taking longer than expected to complete. See Cherwell REST API Performance.

Optimization

  • Content Standards

    Learn about the standards Cherwell uses for developing CSM content elements, such as Business Objects, forms, fields, and more. Consistently applying these standards to content you create and modify will help minimize issues associated with inconsistent content items. See Content Standards Overview.

  • Email Monitoring

    Learn how to avoid common mistakes and troubleshoot issues that may occur with the Email and Event Monitor Service. See Recommendations for Implementing Email Monitoring in CSM.

  • Recommended Timeout Settings

    Learn about the recommended timeout settings in CSM and its supporting services. Recommendations are intended to optimize system performance. See Suggested Timeout Settings for CSM.

  • Approval and Denial Rules

    Learn about the set process used to determine whether an approval or a denial can be actioned. Detailed examples are provided for a variety of approval and denial scenarios. See Approval and Denial Threshold Rules.

  • Blueprint Publishing

    Certain changes to Business Objects may cause database tables to be rebuilt during the publish process. This can extend the amount of time it takes to complete the publish process, especially for Business Objects that contain a large number of records. This may impact system performance and cause some Business Objects to be unavailable. See Performance Impact of Blueprint Changes.

  • Integration Options

    Learn the pros and cons of various integration options that enable you to import, export, or link information between two systems. There are also options for performing actions that are triggered by an external tool or by CSM. See CSM Integration Options.

Security

  • Platform Security Certification

    Application and environment testing are performed regularly to ensure security hardening for CSM. See CSM Core Platform Security.

  • Authentication Methods

    Learn about the four methods for authenticating users: internal, LDAP/Active Directory, Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), and Windows authentication. See Authentication Methods.

  • Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)

    On-premise customers can learn how to enable HSTS to inform a browser that it should contact CSM web applications only through HTTPS connections and should automatically convert all attempts to access applications using HTTP to HTTPS requests instead.

    Be aware that the process is different depending on which version of Internet Information Services (IIS) you use. See Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS).

  • Email Credentials FAQ

    Find information about securing credentials-based email accounts and answers to frequently-asked questions about Modern Authentication and OAuth 2.0. See Modern Authentication and Google Authentication FAQs.

  • Encrypt Sensitive Data

    Learn how to encrypt sensitive data using two CSM features:

    • Encryption modifiers store private information, such as API keys, user names, or passwords in CSM. This is useful for integrating CSM with other systems (Examples: Amazon, Microsoft Teams) that require credentials and other sensitive information to be stored in the CSM database. See Encryption Modifiers.
    • Field-level encryption enables you to safely gather sensitive information from forms. See About Encrypted Fields.

Diagnostics

  • Run the Performance Health Check Tool

    Learn how to monitor and optimize system configurations that impact performance. For example, use the tool to find inefficient queries and find and fix mismatched Def IDs. See About Performance Health Check.

  • Network Health Check

    Validate network speed and connectivity, so a technician can check for network issues between their client and the server. See Network Health Check Results.

  • Interpret Health Check Results

    After running the Health Check Tool, you can optimize system configurations based on the results of the basic checks, rules reports, and usage statistics. See Interpreting Health Check Results.

  • View Queue Service Logs

    Use the data that RabbitMQ provides to make informed decisions about scaling CSM microservices. Helpful data includes a list of machines with CSM installed connecting to RabbitMQ, the number of workers, the number of pending messages, and the number of queued messages. See Monitor Queues from the RabbitMQ Management Interface.

  • Troubleshoot Queues in CherwellMQS

    Find information and steps for identifying and removing "stuck" items in a queue, increasing the speed of Automation Processing events, and decreasing event processing time. See Troubleshooting Queues in CherwellMQS.

Configuration

  • Considerations to Move from Development to Production

    See guidelines to synchronize databases between a development or test system and production, remove test data, and perform system maintenance. Also, learn about activating integrations on production and see a final system checklist. See Considerations for Moving from Development to Production.

  • Configure the Cherwell Service Host for a Local Scheduler

    Most environments have the Scheduling Service on the same network as the other CSM services. However, in some cases you may want to set up a second Scheduler on a separate network. Follow these steps to configure this setup: Configure the Cherwell Service Host for a Local Scheduler.

  • Scale CSM

    Guidance and recommendations for scaling CSM have been simplified and improved. Learn how, why, and when to scale the Cherwell Service Host, the CSM web applications, or both. See Scaling CSM.

    In addition, see specific hardware, CPU, memory, and storage recommendations for using CSM with a load balancer through server farms. Redis guidelines are included. See Server Farm Resource Recommendations.

  • MSP Deployment and Configuration Options

    Learn how to configure CSM for simple access deployment or by using segregated tenants. The choices depend on the level of access and customization required by the tenants weighed against the cost of configuring and maintaining the system. See MSP Deployment and Configuration Options.