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Replacing hardware assets

Penny_BetzPenny_Betz Customer IT Monkey ✭

When we replace our servers we have a process where we:

1. Have a server called server1

2. We buy a replacement server and before putting it on the network set the existing server name to Server1-old

3. We call the new server server1-new when we add it to the network

4. We do all the file/services transfers from the old server to the new

5. We then take the old server off the network and rename to new server to server1

The problem comes with Asset Management in that server1-old takes on the serial number of the new server 1 once the name is changed and unless you know to look through all of the hardware items for server1 you cannot get to all of the warranty, maintenance info, etc. about server 1 if you search by the original server's serial number. The old server also gets updated model info ,etc. from the new server

How do others handle this?

Answers

  • Brett_MoffettBrett_Moffett Cireson PACE Super IT Monkey ✭✭✭✭✭
    A few questions that I have about your setup....
    1) What is the Unique Key that you have selected within the Asset Management settings? (Serial Number, Asset Tag, Principle Name, Guid or SID)
    2) Do you have an AD connector pulling computer information from AD in to SCSM? (Check the computer CI and check if it has an Active Directory SID)
    3) Do you manually create the Hardware Asset CI's or does your environment automatically create them based on the AM Settings?

    Let me know these answers and I can shed some light on what is happening in your environment.
  • Haseeb_MalikHaseeb_Malik Member IT Monkey ✭
    Hi Brett,

     1. Asset Management Settings for Unique Key is Guid
     
     
     2. No, not anymore. We used to have, but now only have an SCCM connector bringing in Servers. We were told it was OK to do this. This issue was happening even before we turned off the AD connectors.
     
     3. The hardware asset CI's are created manually for new servers (or should be) with the serial number and financial information filled out and we then rely on the SCCM connector and HW Asset Sync workflow to do their magic.
  • Brett_MoffettBrett_Moffett Cireson PACE Super IT Monkey ✭✭✭✭✭
    OK, With the Unique Key being GUID this behavior should not be happening unless you do not have the GUID published against the Computer CI.
    I agree that the ConfigMgr connector information is usually enough data for use within SCSM however, when we start using Cireson Asset management we then suggest you start to also bring computer information in via the AD Connector so the GUID is published. This is used to check if a new computer is a new asset or just a renamed existing asset as well as some counting of Software Assets.
    Without the GUID published to the Computer CI and the Unique key set to GUID, I would expect the results you are seeing.
    Other engineers may like to do it differently but i usually use the Serial Number as the unique key. This does not rely on AD data so the data coming in via ConfigMgr is enough for this.

    This is not something simple to test and it may take some time to get a solid result on.
    Good Luck
  • Marek_LefekMarek_Lefek Customer Advanced IT Monkey ✭✭✭
    edited July 2016

    Hello, What is the best solution to choose as connector, to avoid the situations:

    1.computer goes to service and there have changed Name or serial number.

    2. Computer goes to another location oraz is refreshed. How to have the history that earier the same computer has name eg. COMP-1-1 and later has name COMP-2-23.

    In best way, is to see as in the image on the top:

    Old name: COMP-1-1        New name:COMP-2-23.

    Can I find somwhere or ask you, what are advantages/disadvantages of each.connector type?

  • Brett_MoffettBrett_Moffett Cireson PACE Super IT Monkey ✭✭✭✭✭
    The serial number for a Hardware Asset should never change.
    This is the serial number that is stamped on the hardware when it is built by the manufacturer.

    However the name of the PC in Active Directory may change many times during it's life.
    If you have the AD GUID for the computer account published in the Computer CI in SCSM, then the Cireson Asset Management workflow will detect that the GUID is the same but the name has changed and will deal with it from there just renaming the connected PC. All the history and details remain with the Hardware Asset and this should all take care of itself.

    The question you had of "How can we show the old name and the new name" that is a lot more complex than it first sounds.
    The name change would have to be detected and a custom field updated to take the old computer name.
    If that computer gets renamed twice in a short period of time then the first PC name would no longer be available in this field etc.

    What does having the old PC name assist you with during day-to-day fault finding and administration?
    If there is no actual requirement for support to know this then I would probably not worry about it too much.
    Tracking PC's by their Serial number will make sure you always have an accurate count of PC's in your environment.

    Hope this helps
  • Haseeb_MalikHaseeb_Malik Member IT Monkey ✭
    OK, With the Unique Key being GUID this behavior should not be happening unless you do not have the GUID published against the Computer CI.
    I agree that the ConfigMgr connector information is usually enough data for use within SCSM however, when we start using Cireson Asset management we then suggest you start to also bring computer information in via the AD Connector so the GUID is published. This is used to check if a new computer is a new asset or just a renamed existing asset as well as some counting of Software Assets.
    Without the GUID published to the Computer CI and the Unique key set to GUID, I would expect the results you are seeing.
    Other engineers may like to do it differently but i usually use the Serial Number as the unique key. This does not rely on AD data so the data coming in via ConfigMgr is enough for this.

    This is not something simple to test and it may take some time to get a solid result on.
    Good Luck
    Thanks Brett, I'm kind of reluctant to turn on the AD connector at the moment as we've been having problems with SCCM connectors not completing successfully. We found that when computer CI's weren't being created via SCCM connectors, they would then be created via the AD connector, however as there is no serial number populated, it would result in creating a duplicate asset as our Asset Managers create a record manually when HW is ordered.
     
    I'd be happy to change the AM Settings to Serial Number, but two questions here:
    1. What effect (if any) would this have on our existing AM data that was imported with GUID as Primary Key?
    2. I set Serial Number as the Primary Key in my dev environment, but it appears the system allows you to create a new hw asset with a duplicate serial number from another computer. Isn't this going to cause problems further down the line? Or am I missed something here? 
  • Brett_MoffettBrett_Moffett Cireson PACE Super IT Monkey ✭✭✭✭✭
    There should be no effect on changing this setting as the workflow should know that the hardware asset already exists and just update the fact that the serial number is now the key.
    I'm interested why there is no Serial number populated? Has the Hardware inventory for the ConfigMgr connector not run on the clients yet?

    As for your second point, yes this is an issue. The workflow will update hardware assets with the serial number but if it finds two machines with the same serial number it will enter both. Whats really strange is it will then swap the associated CI back and forth between the two Computer CI's each time the workflow runs.

    The solution here is to make sure that the AD Connector account has rights over the deleted items container inside AD. That way when a Computer account in AD gets deleted the record in SCSM gets moved to the deleted items folder and it is not int he list for the workflow to use.
    Also, there is a fix for this on the way. The next update for Asset Management will resolve this by looking at the Computer CI's witht he same Serial number and picking the one with the most recent Inventory date.

  • Haseeb_MalikHaseeb_Malik Member IT Monkey ✭
    I'm interested why there is no Serial number populated? Has the Hardware inventory for the ConfigMgr connector not run on the clients yet?

    The hardware inventory has run on the SCCM client (The collections I've created in SCCM have a membership rule to only include computers that have run a HW inventory). I've narrowed the issue down to being something with our Prod SCSM environment. The connectors rarely complete 100% successfully and we see some CI's or data taking days/weeks to update. I have the same connectors working fine in my nice clean dev environment. This is with MS Premier Support at the moment.


    The solution here is to make sure that the AD Connector account has rights over the deleted items container inside AD. That way when a Computer account in AD gets deleted the record in SCSM gets moved to the deleted items folder and it is not int he list for the workflow to use. Also, there is a fix for this on the way. The next update for Asset Management will resolve this by looking at the Computer CI's witht he same Serial number and picking the one with the most recent Inventory date.

    This will be great as it should solve the re-named computers issue we've struggled with too as per THIS thread... Any ideas how far away this is from being published? I'd be happy to test if you need a guinea pig.


     

     
  • Brett_MoffettBrett_Moffett Cireson PACE Super IT Monkey ✭✭✭✭✭
    AM Updates are not far away. (I don't have any firm dates to share...  sorry)
    Just keep an eye out for announcements via the newsletter and community.
  • Marek_LefekMarek_Lefek Customer Advanced IT Monkey ✭✭✭

    Which unique key is preffered or what advantage it has. In my opinion we noticed that:

    • Serial Number - is from the device - SCCM, but sometimes, when device came back from service it can be deleted,
    • Asset Tag - we set the assset tag manualy- it is form sticker with inventory number, it can be change in one device,
    • Principle Name - we try to set some rules, but it
    • Guid or SID - it is unique and cant be change

    I'm asking in context after system reainstalation, when Asset tag is written by hand and can make a mistake,

    How make, that newly discovered device by sccm wil by assign to proper asset tag - withount making double entries and without changing Principal name and asset tag of device?

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