Client Management Suite

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to tackle this?  For our replacement cycle we would like to know the approximate age of the computer.  My assumption is we need to set up a custom data source and them manually import the purchase dates, then run the report against that custom data.

I have never worked with custom data so it seems a but daunting. Any thoughts?

Hi,

Perhaps, you can use OS install date information in inventory like below:

select vcomputer.name, inv_os_operating_system.[Install Date] from vcomputer

inner join inv_os_operating_system

on vcomputer.guid = inv_os_operating_system.[_Resourceguid]

That would be a start, but many machines are imaged multiple times, so it won't be the best metric.  Thanks for pointing that out to me though as I was not aware of that column.

By setting up and importing from a custom datasource, you could add a custom dataclass, and work out all the details that way. Be it resource association or CMDB rules or whatever.

I didn't see that you want use asset data

You're either going to use Asset Management (if you own it) or set up a custom data class.  I believe you're a little limited in what you can do with custom data classes without Asset Management, however.

We own Asset.  How do you propose we use it in this case?

Although we own asset, we have never put it to use and we are starting the process of getting that going, so any pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bryan

You could create a pseudo-contract or pseudo-lease.  For example, you could pretend that the Dell 380 purchased on April 4, 2009 is actually part of a 4-year lease in order to match your policy of rotating equipment once it becomes 4 years old.  The lease end date could be termed April 4, 2013.  You could then pull a report of upcoming lease expirations and correspondingly locate the assets.

Alternatively, you could create a custom data class attribute for the Computer configuration item type called Purchase Date and then pull a report against this data class attribute.

This leaves you needing to determine purchase date for your existing assets.  Some ideas:

• Look up each system by Service Tag on a support site, such as support.dell.com
• Define existing hardware models and then enter an approximate date for each model based on a support site like support.dell.com
• Define existing hardware models and then enter approximate guesses
• List all hardware by specifications (RAM, CPU, HDD, etc) and then divide by your rotation (e.g. 48 months), and add each section to a month, starting June 2006 and moving through the current month, June 2010
• Do not import date values; only enter dates going forward

Does this help?