Network Discovery creating duplicates?

[Jaybone]

Hi, all. Weird thing...

 

Config Manager 2012, SP1.

 

AD discovery and network discovery are both on. We've got a number of computers showing up twice in CM. For each of these, there's one instance that looks all fine and happy with successful deployments, etc; then there's another "bare-bones" kind of version with only a handful of properties actually populated.

 

For the bare-bones copy of these:

Some things match the active client, namely -

MAC Address; IP Address; subnet; Resource Domain or Workgroup; Name; NETBIOS Name; AD, Agent, CM Assigned, CM Resident sites, Resource type (=System), and Decommissioned (=No)

 

While other stuff differs -

Agent Name = "SMS_NETWORK_DISCOVERY" (active client has this along with others)

Creation Date is always well after the creation date of the "real" copy

Resource ID is way different

Resource Names = netbios name and FQDN, where active client only has FQDN here

 

And the rest of the fields are usually empty, but not always. LastLogonTimeStamp is sometimes present - I'm guessing this is a case of the DB updating the field for the wrong instance. E.g. I'm looking at one now where the bare-bones copy has a Last Logon Timestamp of 18 August while the real copy is showing a Last Logon Timestamp back in April, right around the time the bad copy showed up. The real one has a last policy request from less than 10 minutes ago...

 

 

What am i missing here that's causing these to show up? With only a few dozen, it's not a big deal for me to just go in and get rid of them manually, but I'd rather address the root cause.

 

Pretty sure it's not a case of AD delta discovery+OSD looking for unknowns, which is about all I can google up in regards to duplicates, as these new copies showed up in mostly in July 2014 for systems that were either built from scratch or OSD'd and have been in AD for a year or more.

[Jorgen Nilsson]

Hi,

It sounds more likely that it is Network discovery that causes it, why are you using Network discovery if you have an AD? Workgroup clients? Do all of these duplicate, inactive objects have the same value and are discovered by Network Discovery?

Regards,

Jörgen

[Jaybone]

Hi,

It sounds more likely that it is Network discovery that causes it, why are you using Network discovery if you have an AD? Workgroup clients? Do all of these duplicate, inactive objects have the same value and are discovered by Network Discovery?

Regards,

Jörgen

 

Why? Good question. "Because that's the way it's always been," I guess. From what I understand, the network here was kind of a mess when CM was first installed about 8 months before I started. I think the idea was to find out what was out there and not known about at the time. Still a good thing to be doing, in my opinion, but it's not like anyone actually has time to look at or follow up on any of the unknowns, anyway...

 

>>>Do all of these duplicate, inactive objects have the same value and are discovered by Network Discovery?<<<

 

Yep.