Asset Management Suite

Okay, here's the deal, we have Altiris Asset Management 6.5 and Location to Subnet is configured to tell us which floor a PC is on and of course Patch Management goes off this data. When we disconnect and return a PC to the Warehouse, switch to 'In Stock' Status in the Altiris 6.5 Console and switch the Location, unless the PC is turned on in the warehouse so it can pick up a new IP and Subnet specific to the floor the Warehouse is located on, it will show up as still on the floor it was previously on. You can imagine how tedious this issue can be when we have to do Patch Remediation. Anyway, so, here's my question, since we'll be upgrading to Altiris 7.1 soon is there a way to supersede Location to Subnet when a PC is returned to stock without having to turn it back on, connect it to the network and then power it back down? Is there a Workflow you've perhaps created to correct this issue or is this even an issue in 7.1? Thanks in advance!

You can try to have a look at CMDB rule, under Settings\Notification Server\Connector\CMDB rule, right click on this folder and select to create a new CMDB rule.

Then you can specify the resource type you want to modify, and use the logically express and put Asset status resource association = In Stock to pull out Asset that is in In stock status, and then on step3, you can update their location.

Then, after testing on this CMDB rule, schedule this rule to run.

Let's talk about the cause of your issue first.

The reason you see your 'in-stock' computers automatically changed their locations back to their original locations is that the scheduled task Network Resource Location Update kicked in and it changed your in-stock computers' location back to the locations associated with their IP addresses (subnet).

So, you can either stop this scheduled task from running...which you will certainly give me a .

Alternatively you can exclude these in-stock computers from being flipped. I have created a video to demostrate how you can achieve this in 7.x environment. I will post it here once it is available. However, you are on Asset 6.5, but the theory is exactly the same.

The solution is to create a collection (in 6.5, filter in 7.x) with the following sql query to include all in-stock network resources:

declare @inStock uniqueidentifier
set @inStock = '1C139F6C-F210-4002-90D0-4DFAF98D5FA4'
declare @assetStatus uniqueidentifier
set @assetStatus = '3028166F-C0D6-41D8-9CB7-F64852E0FD01'

select ri.Guid from vResourceItem ri join ResourceTypeHierarchy rth on rth.ResourceTypeGuid = ri.ResourceTypeGuid join ResourceAssociation ra on ri.Guid = ra.ParentResourceGuid and ra.ResourceAssociationTypeGuid = @assetStatus
where rth.BaseResourceTypeGuid = 'ECADDEC9-3178-4FFB-BEB4-D29E0767A79E' and ra.ChildResourceGuid = @inStock

select nr.Guid from vRM_Network_Resource nr
join ResourceAssociation ra on nr.Guid = ra.ParentResourceGuid and ra.ResourceAssociationTypeGuid = @assetStatus
where nr.Deleted = 0 and ra.ChildResourceGuid = @inStock

Once you have this collection or filter, then you can add this collection or filter into the exclude list for task 'Update Network Resource Location'. In 6.5, you can find this task by search or from Configuration section's CMDB solution settings. In 7.x, find it under Manage / Job and Tasks / Service and Asset Management.

The video I uploaded is quite straight forward to follow. It starts from creating such a filter to include any in-stock network resources, then followed by adding this filter as exclude filter for 'Update Network Resource Location' task.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/sites/default/files/SymConnect_Demo_-_Subnet_to_Location_sync.swf

I couldn't figure out how to embed this video in the post. So you may have to download it and open it in your browser to see the content. My apology for that.