Internal - Importing a CCS Standard fails with error 'Target type referenced in the standard does not exist in the system'

Products

• Control Compliance Suite Standards Server
• Control Compliance Suite
• Control Compliance Suite Windows

Issue/Introduction

Control Compliance Suite (CCS)

When importing a CCS standard from another CCS environment, you get the following error and the import fails:

 

Environment

Release : CCS 12.6.x

Component : CCS Console

Cause

There was a target type 'Windows Server 2019 Machines only' (no quotes) that was introduced when Windows 2019 servers were first supported, but then it was removed and split into two other target types in a later SCU.  New CCS environments will not have the 'Windows Server 2019 Machines only' target type, so when trying to import a standard that was exported from an older CCS environment it will display this error and will not import the standard. 

Resolution

To fix the issue, the reference to the target type that is causing the error needs to be removed the the standard .xml file.  In this example,  'Windows Server 2019 Machines only' target type will need to be removed manually from the .xml of the standard.

First, you need to enable verbose CCS Console logging.
How to enable verbose logs for the CCS console

Second try to import that standard again to duplicate the issue.

Third, in the verbose Console logs look for an error similar to the following.  In this example it is the target type with sourctypeUid= 8ebef05b-8e73-482e-a596-31baaa1b4942 is causing the problem:

2021-05-20 16:14:43.285,2021-05-20 <IP>,<hostname>,Error,Standards,SymConsole,9724,,1,_populateObject,,0,1,Unknown subnode of 'standard' node targettypes 2021-05-20 16:14:43.316,2021-05-20 <IP>,<hostname>,Verbose,Standards,SymConsole,9724,,1,Read,,0,1,public TargetType Read(string TargetTypeUid) is requested to return the object with sourctypeUid= sample_Uid

Looking in the exported standard xml, that sourctypeUid is associated with the Windows Server 2019 Machines only target type:  (for this example)

<targettype>
<UID>sample_uid</UID>
<name>Windows 2019 Machines</name>
<description>Windows Server 2019 Machines only</description>

You can then go through that xml and remove any reference to that target type.  Once that is removed, then that standard should be able to be imported into the CCS environment.