Task Server doesn't always follow Site Server definitions well when assigning Site Servers to Clients Machines.

Products

• Task Server
• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

You noticed some client machines are not assigned to the expected Site Server according to your Site assignment.

Here's what should be happening when a client machine connects to the SMP Server and requests a Task Server:

1. The SMP Server scans to see if a computer is "manually assigned" to a task server.  If so, that will be the task server returned to the client and the process is done.
2. Failing that, the SMP Server scans to see if a computer is assigned to a Site via Site Definition (subnets).  If so, any/all of the servers in the site should be returned to the Client machine.  The client machine will need to pick one of them per the rules assigned (fastest connection or least connections for example).
3. Failing that, the SMP Server begins a round-robin selection of Site Servers - including just about any site server available.  These are distributed literally round-robin each request.
4. Failing that, the SMP Server will hand out itself as the Task Server.

What appears to be happening in some cases, not all, follows:

1. The manually assigned computer may be ignored, resorting to any server in the site instead.  Sometimes this means any EXCEPT the one manually assigned.
2. Subnets are ignored and the clients are sent either the round-robin or SMP Server response.  Sometimes, the fully functional Site Server will have no clients attached at all.
3. Clients will report as correctly connecting to the Task Server, though will not receive Tasks unless Manually Assigned to a Server.

Environment

ITMS 7.x, 8.x, 8.7.x

Resolution

The best suggestion for making sure a client machine to be assigned to a specific Task Server at this time is to manually assign agents.  This seems to be reliable for most of our customers.

It should be noted that MOST customers don't see this issue so it's safe to guess that many site servers might work just fine.

It also seems that only having one subnet to a Site Server seems to work pretty well.

Finally, relative to the first solution suggested, what several customers are doing is making filters based on subnets, then assigning these to the Sites as manually assignments.  This makes the clients just as flexible as the normal site/subnet definitions, but gets around the limitation.

Note:
Remember to send a Reset Agent task once changes have been made so the client will request a new server.

For more details on how Task Server assignment works, refer to:

Task Server is not registering to itself automatically (KB 171910)