When are "pending delete" items actually deleted ?

Stephane_Bouillon

Hi I deleted a bunch of location items. They no longer appear in the console, but in service request form queries they still show up. When will they be actually deleted ? Can I force this ?

damon_mulligan

They will never be deleted automatically. You need to go to Administration > Deleted Item and Remove the item. When you delete a CI in SCSM, it just gives it a status of "Pending Delete", and that for the most part, just removes it from most views. Need to "Remove" to really get rid of.

Tom_Hendricks

You can delete them from Administration > Deleted Items in the SCSM console, or you could remove the objects using SMLets or the built-in powershell cmdlets (filter by the object status).

If you wanted this to occur in a more automated fashion, you could create a runbook in Orchestrator/SMA and schedule it to occur whenever suits you.

I believe it would also be possible to create an override in a management pack that changes the job schedule/frequency within SCSM itself (remember that SCSM has the same inner workings as SCOM and therefore the concept of an override is a valid one).  I am afraid that I do not have any examples of this readily available, however.

damon_mulligan

They will never be deleted automatically. You need to go to Administration > Deleted Item and Remove the item. When you delete a CI in SCSM, it just gives it a status of "Pending Delete", and that for the most part, just removes it from most views. Need to "Remove" to really get rid of.

Tom_Hendricks

You can delete them from Administration > Deleted Items in the SCSM console, or you could remove the objects using SMLets or the built-in powershell cmdlets (filter by the object status).

If you wanted this to occur in a more automated fashion, you could create a runbook in Orchestrator/SMA and schedule it to occur whenever suits you.

I believe it would also be possible to create an override in a management pack that changes the job schedule/frequency within SCSM itself (remember that SCSM has the same inner workings as SCOM and therefore the concept of an override is a valid one).  I am afraid that I do not have any examples of this readily available, however.

Stephane_Bouillon

Thanks guys, top !

Tom_Hendricks

I did not see @damon_mulligan's post before I published mine.  I had thought that there was a groom job for these objects.  If not, then my comment about an override would not apply, since there is no existing job to alter with one.

Stephane_Bouillon

These were items that could safely be deleted, so I did it manually from the console. Thanks both for your time and effort.

Brian_Wiest

Just as a warning and suggestion
Keeping the deleted items trim really helps your relationship DB. but the warning is that if the SCSM Management servers get deleted (someone who will not be named analyst(Not me )) and then cleared from pending delete will break your farm. 
We run a script on a weekly basis to make sure its trim but includes a variable to not delete the management servers. 
See attached script we received from MS

Just update lines

$doNotDelete = "*" # this should match your SCSM Management server such as "SCSM*" 

$RemoveItems = $False # Until this is set to $True it only pretends to delete the items 

$FileName = "\Deleted_Items_Removed.txt" # .txt is added later in the script 

damon_mulligan

Thanks @Tom_Hendricks for your input. Always appreciate community involvement.
@Stephane_Bouillon There is on thing I would be careful about if you do create an automated job to remove. Make sure there is a check in there to not remove any Windows Computer CI's that are part of your System Center environment. I have seen 2 instances where for some reason the SCSM Server CI was deleted and removed. Which of course stopped everything from working.

Stephane_Bouillon

Noted, thanks again.