<o p=""></o>  

<o p=""> Hi</o>

I’m currently working on a set of reports that highlight to my managers how many machines they have currently and how many are MIA. I set about trying to define what criteria (in plain English) I could use to define to write an appropriate SQL query or queries.<o p=""></o>

<o p=""> </o>

Without going into the detail of what I would like the queries to be, I got bogged down way before this on simply understanding what the table and column names were, and how NS drew the information for them. <o p=""></o>

<o p=""> </o>

I considered the famous ‘IsManaged’… I assumed ‘IsManaged’ would have something to do with the NS client being present. Now I would like to know exactly what triggers the change of this field and what it is supposed to mean and what Altiris uses it for, please?<o p=""></o>

<o p=""> </o>

When I questioned ‘IsManaged’ I came acros some other queries which seemed logical. Firstly by using any field where the date has been updated for example [Inv_Aex_AC_Identification].[Client date] appeared to be client ‘last updated’ type field. It being in the Basic Inventory section I thought that this would be a good way to judge if something was managed – its sent a basic inventory, right?<o p=""></o>

<o p=""> </o>

If you take the following three queries, one asking for all managed computers that have sent a basic inventory update in the last 14 days and all unmanaged computers that have sent an update in the last 14 days there is a discrepency of 2. Apparently 2 PC’s are not managed but the fields still got updated. The last query further serves to widen my misunderstanding where is looks for managed PC’s that havent had that field updated in over 3 months. Apparently 30 of these.<o p=""></o>

<o p=""> </o>

Could learned gentleman please explain the ‘ismanaged’ field and how it is changed and on what criteria, and then explain some of the other fields that can be used to determine the activity of a client PC (like the Client date field below and any others you know of.<o p=""></o>

<o p=""> </o>

Many thanks and apologies for the wall of text with waffle
<o p=""></o>

<o p="">
Mike
 </o>

SELECT COUNT(*) <o p=""></o>

FROM Inv_AeX_AC_Identification acid<o p=""></o>

join vcomputer on acid._resourceguid = vcomputer.guid <o p=""></o>

WHERE DATEDIFF(dd, acid.[Client Date], GETDATE()) < 14<o p=""></o>

and<o p=""></o>

vcomputer.ismanaged = '1'<o p=""></o>

<o p=""> </o>

=9938<o p=""></o>

<o p=""> </o>

SELECT COUNT(*) <o p=""></o>

FROM Inv_AeX_AC_Identification acid<o p=""></o>

join vcomputer on acid._resourceguid = vcomputer.guid <o p=""></o>

WHERE DATEDIFF(dd, acid.[Client Date], GETDATE()) < 14<o p=""></o>

and<o p=""></o>

vcomputer.ismanaged = '0'<o p=""></o>

<o p=""> </o>

=2<o p=""></o>

<o p=""> </o>

SELECT COUNT(*) <o p=""></o>

FROM Inv_AeX_AC_Identification acid<o p=""></o>

join vcomputer on acid._resourceguid = vcomputer.guid <o p=""></o>

WHERE DATEDIFF(dd, acid.[Client Date], GETDATE()) > 90<o p=""></o>

and<o p=""></o>

vcomputer.ismanaged = '1'<o p=""></o>

<o p=""> </o>

=30<o p=""></o>

Hi,
Use vComputer in your query. Forget about Inv_AeX_AC_Identification.
If you're importing from AD, last inventory dates get updated simply by performing the import.
Has nohting to do with being managed or not.

THis is also good to see which PCs have not sent a config request in the last 3 months.
Create a colletcion from it.

select distinct guid  
from vComputer inner join Evt_NS_Client_Config_Request ccr  
on vComputer.guid = ccr.resourceguid  
where (Select Max(StartTime) from Evt_NS_Client_Config_Request t2  
where t2.resourceguid = ccr.resourceguid) < DateAdd(mm,-3,GetDate())

Dan

Hi Michael,
IsManaged is a weird thing...and probably not the best way to know if your resources are actually "active" or not.  There are quite a few KB articles which discuss it at http://kb.altiris.com.  Set your product to "Notification Server" and search for "isManaged" to see some of them that hopefully will help make better sense of it.

Personally I'm a fan of using the "Client Date" column in the ac Identification table to indicate whether a machine is truly alive or not.  This may be justification to actually implement true Asset Management, where each machine is tracked and none should just "go missing" or stop reporting without being part of a lifecycle process (at which time they can be flagged as Retired or another status).  It is more time and overhead to manage, but if you truly want to control where your assets are, it is the way to go.

Dan,
Actually the Client Date field is not updated by the AD Import process.  The "Last Inventory Received" listed in the REsource Manager is, but not Client Date.  The Client Date is client-side generated as part of Basic Inventory (in fact I've seen some machines where the clock/date is wrong reporting a client date of November 2034!)

Hey Kyle,
Yes, Last Inventory Date, that's what I meant :-)
So, are you saying that IsManaged is not accurate and we should use the Client Date field as an indicator?

I just ran these:

select

count(*) from dbo.Inv_AeX_AC_Identification  where [client date] is null

select

count(*) from vcomputer where ismanaged = 0

401 and 389 respectively

Dan

Hiyah,

Looking at Dan's reports i'm not sure that is evidence to show that Ismanaged is anymore or less accurate than client date, it tells me they are different but since i know client date comes from the client and i cant explain 'Ismanaged' its why ive stuck with it.

I checked article Article ID: 26525 and it occurred to me that I retire servers that for some reason got the NS client. I retire them to stop them doing anything bad. But I didnt feel the article sufficiently explained the disparities we see.

What i was looking for was a single method for listing machines that are reporting that I understood, which is another reason I cannot trust 'IsManaged'.

However, thanks for the input, its certainly made me think more, even if i'm understanding less :)

Another example

select distinct guid  
from vComputer inner join Evt_NS_Client_Config_Request ccr  
on vComputer.guid = ccr.resourceguid  
where (Select Max(StartTime) from Evt_NS_Client_Config_Request t2  
where t2.resourceguid = ccr.resourceguid) < DateAdd(mm,-3,GetDate())

Which is Dan's query above, on my box returns 17 rows on approximately 10500 clients

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM Inv_AeX_AC_Identification acid
WHERE DATEDIFF(dd, acid.[Client Date], GETDATE()) > 90

returns 261

I'm using SQL 2000 - thats made some reporting differences before in these forums, and im sure theres going to be some oddities in my environment, but knowing it, I believe the second query - in giving me a more messy environment, is also likely to be more useful.

Any thoughts?

I posted a query with details on my blog a while back:

How to get a quick count of active machines on a client facing NS?

 
There's a number of responses there that you should find interesting.

Actually that article inspired me to investigate and question it further :)