Delete obsolete Client discovery data - Is it safe to run daily?

Hi Champs,

I do have around 22000 clients in my SMS hierarchy. I have my hearbeat discovery enabled to run once in a week. And removing obsoletes is been set to default 90 days. I am planning to change this to run on a daily basis, by understanding the fact that the active clients will never been tagged as obsolete. The below technet says, it is not recommended but i do not understand the exact reason...

http://technet.microsoft..../library/bb632879.aspx

The number of days should be greater than the heartbeat schedule is set for. This allows active clients to send a heartbeat discovery record, which prevents them being deleted by this task.

When SMS finds that the client hardware ID has been updated or superseded by another machine and if multiple records (due to re imaging etc )are in place having the same hardware ID value for the machine, the older records are marked as obsolete. This will only happen if a new active record is already replaced with the old machine right? so, the old machine will be marked as obsolete and the new machine will start reporting. So, how generating DDR's will come into picture?

Appreciate your helps and thoughts on this...

Regards,
Jaison

Everyday is definitely excessive. As the link you post points out, this should greater than the heartbeat interval. I do often lower this value greatly, but usually to 14 or 30 days.

I don't know the exact technical details for the DDR and heartbeat in this are probably better answered by developer, but going by what the documentation says is always good practice.

Hi Jason,

I agree with you!

But as i said, i don't see any reason how heartbeat discovery schedule and delete obsolete task interval would cause removing an active client data??!

I would love to see an explanation from someone who had came across this configuration like us...

JJ

Yea but happens when you have to do a repair on a computer or computers ? Or client upgrade?

I did not get you!

Any help guys?

You are assuming in your example that the sms guid will stay the same.

You will set up a race condition where the active wouldnt have a chance to send a DDR up letting SMS know which is valid. I think you would  end up with a lot of duplicate machine records.

the old machine's obsolete flag will changed to 1 ONLY when there is an active record created with the same name (If there is a new record created in the SMS Db, means, DDR is already sent??!)...So how can you confirm that this will cause deletion of active records?

Not sure about deletion of records but it does sound like there will be a lot of duplicate records. perhaps a devleoper can give that insight.

Is there any MS guys around?

So what's your concern?  We've run heartbeat & the delete obsolete task daily without issues.  We did have a couple app testers on VMs who'd reimage like 40x a day and in those extreme cases, SMS wasn't able to figure which was obsolete anymore.  Other than that, it's just worked.

hey brian,

Thanks for sharing this...

I have my heartbeat discovery set to occur on once in a week. And i do have my delete obsolete's set to occur on every 90 days. There were a request from the client to change it to run on every days so that your DB will be clean. As i mentioned earlier, the theory says, this will cause the deletion of active clients since i have heartbeat discovery running greater than my 'delete obsolete' schedule! I would like to get a technical work flow to prove that this is true!!

Hope you got it..

Like Brian said the frequency wouldn't allow SMS to detect what's obsolete so in essence the clients databse would end up "dirty" over time until the Delete Inactive Client Discovery discovery kicked in I guess.

Yeah, I don't get how heartbeat comes into play.  Would make sense for inactive clients, but I don't get how for obsolete.  Let me find out.

Hi guys,
 
pretty old post but still it would be great if someone can give more information on this question?
 
Thanks,
Jaison Jose