Package Server creating shares on every disk (except system)

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

Report received of an issue with package shares being created on a Package Server (PS). 

There is 85GB of space available on the drive with the main package share (in this case the D drive). Shares on the E and M drives keep getting created. Checked if there was a Custom Settings for the Package Service:

and made sure that the Global Package Service Setting has unchecked the "Allow usage of all the fixed drives when the primary file storage location runs out of disk space".

Removed the Shares and the Virtual directories in IIS. However, they still keep getting recreated. This is only happening on one of 30+ Site Servers.

As far as we can tell, the customer is not using a "Custom location" for these packages. 

Environment

ITMS 8.x

Cause

At one point, it seemed that this particular package server ran out of the space and had the option "Allow usage of all the fixed drives when the primary file storage location runs out of disk space" turned on. Now, even after having this option unchecked, the package references to those E and M disk shares are kept. 

If this package server was downloading packages to E and M drive before, then they switched that off, the packages WILL NOT GO by itself to the D drive. They reside where they were downloaded. And since the packages are residing on E and M drives, then PS will create shares and Virtual Directories for them automatically.

That is the "self-cure" logic of PS. All shares and Virtual Directories are recreated in some interval and there is no need to delete shares, they will be gone automatically (after some time). Shares are the consequence, not a reason.

The registry called "AllowFixedDrives" (under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Altiris\Altiris Agent\Package Server) was set to "0", which means PackageDelivery will not download to other drives except the default one. In this case it is "D".

150359 "Configuring Primary File Storage Location for Package Servers Post-ITMS 8.0"

Resolution

There is not an issue that needs fixing. If this PS was set up initially to use all drives, it could have managed to download something to the E and M drives BEFORE they changed it not to use these drives. Then, packages will not move by itself to the D drive when they uncheck "Allow usage of all the fixed drives when the primary file storage location runs out of disk space". The packages will remain where they are (already on E and M) and PS will maintain their accessibility by creating shares for them.

If you delete the packages from those E and M drives, they should be re-downloaded by PS to the default location. It will create the required/missing share right while package verification, and after some time, the unused shares will be deleted too.

So if all packages will go to D drive, the unused shares and virtual directories will be gone automatically.

Note: If you need to move the packages on those drives to the default one without waiting for this process to do it automatically, try this:

Using as an example the locations to E and M drives, the package references are written in every package metadata (package, snapdata and log XMLs), which is located on D drive with same GUID.

Option 1:

You could just try:
1. deleting some package from M drive
2. delete same guid folder from D drive.
3. click in PS UI to "verify integrity" on that package
4. click "download" on it. It should go to default location.

Option 2:

If you use a "custom location" pointing manually to the default drive (in this case D drive), in PS policy, then all packages will move to this location, including the "rotated" one which are on a different drive. Then you could select back to "default location" in PS policy and all the packages will move to default place.
When all packages will be on D drive, the shares and Virtual Directories should be gone automatically and not created again.

Option 3:

You could use powershell to make the move (moving from E drive to D Drive):

$e=GCI-Path"e:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris Agent\Package Delivery"|SelectFullName

$e=$e.FullName

ForEach ($itemin$e)

{ $d=$item-replace"e:","d:" GCI-Path$d-Filter*.xml|Remove-Item-Force Move-Item-Path"$item"-Destination"D:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris Agent\Package Delivery"-Force }