Resources not deleting from top level reporting NS when deleted from down stream NS with Inventory Forwarding

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

Inventory Forwarding is set up between two NS's. When a computer from our down stream notification server is deleted why is it still being seen under the resources on our reporting notification server?

Cause

The Inventory Forwarding functionality is not designed to take care of the purging of resources at the destination NS after they are purged on the source NS. It only serves the function of forwarding inventory information from the source NS to the destination NS.  There however is a workaround (see below Resolution)

This added functionality has been raised as an enhancement request and is being considered for a future release, unfortunately no further specifics in relation to this at this point in time can be provided.

Resolution

Note: This is an unsupported method

The work-around is as follows

1. Create a collection on your reporting NS as follows:

SELECT c.Guid
  FROM [vComputerResource] c
 INNER JOIN
       (SELECT [ResourceGuid], max([ModifiedDate]) as LatestInventoryDate FROM dbo.ResourceUpdateSummary GROUP BY [ResourceGuid]) as dt
    ON c.Guid = dt.ResourceGuid
 INNER JOIN vResourceEx rx ON rx.Guid = c.Guid
 WHERE rx.IsManaged = 1
   AND rx.IsLocal = 0
   AND dt.LatestInventoryDate < dateadd ( dd , -60 , getdate() )

In this example, the collection will be populated with machines that have not forwarded any inventory for 60 days. You can configure the bottom line, as needed, with whatever purge settings you require. One thing to note here of course is to make sure that the time interval specified for the above collection is not less than or equal to the frequency of the Inventory Forwarding rule schedule.

2. Copy and paste the following into notepad and then save it as DeleteCollectionMembers.cs:

///Copy this contents into notepad and save the file as DeleteCollectionMembers.cs

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.IO;
using System.Xml;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlTypes;
using System.Data.SqlClient;

using Altiris.NS;
using Altiris.NS.StandardItems;
using Altiris.NS.ItemManagement;
using Altiris.NS.Security;
using Altiris.NS.ContextManagement;
using Altiris.NS.StandardItems.Collection;

namespace NScript.Test
{
 /// <summary>
 /// Summary description for Class1.
 /// </summary>
 public class Class1
 {
  public Class1()
  {
   //
   // TODO: Add constructor logic here
   //
  }

  /// <summary>
  /// The main entry point for the application.
  /// </summary
  [STAThread]
  static void Main(string[] args)
  {

   SecurityContextManager.SetContextData();
   Guid collectionGuid;

   try
   {
    collectionGuid = new Guid(args[0]);
   }
   catch
   {
    Console.WriteLine("Need to specify collection guid");
    return;
   }

   ResourceCollection collection = (ResourceCollection) Item.GetItem(collectionGuid);
   if (collection == null)
   {
    Console.WriteLine("Collection guid {0.EN_US} not found", collectionGuid.ToString());
    return;
   }

   collection.UpdateMembership (true);

   using (DatabaseContext context = DatabaseContext.GetContext())
   {
    string sql = string.Format(@"select ResourceGuid from CollectionMembership where CollectionGuid = '{0.EN_US}'", collectionGuid);
    
    ArrayList list = new ArrayList();
    int i = 0;

    using (SqlDataReader reader = (SqlDataReader) context.CreateCommand(sql).ExecuteReader())
    {
     while (reader.Read())
     {
      list.Add(reader.GetGuid(0));
     
     }
    }

    Console.WriteLine("{0.EN_US} computer(s) to be deleted", list.Count);

    if (list.Count == 0)
     return;

    foreach (Guid guid in list)
    {
     Item.DeleteItem(guid);
     if (++i % 20 == 0)
     {
      Console.WriteLine("{0.EN_US} done..",i);
     }
    }

    Console.WriteLine("Deletion of {0.EN_US} computer(s) complete.",i); 

   }
  }
 }
}

3. Now use the .cs utility created above to delete all of the computers that are present in the created collection. Run the above utility on a daily basis on your reporting NS (you may want to schedule this) using the following command line:

nscript DeleteCollectionMembers.cs <Guid>

where <Guid> is the guid of the collection that you created above.

Applies To
Notification Server 6.0 Service Pack 3 (all hotfixes and previous versions).