Clients Are Not Detected When Network Discovery Is Used (278298)

SYMPTOMS

In Systems Management Server (SMS), when you use Network Discovery, it populates the IsClient fields in the database with a Null value.

For example, when you view an individual computer in the All Systems collection, the information for the computer may indicate that the value for SMSUniqueIdentifier is Null. However, Smscfg.ini and the system_data table indicate that the computer has been assigned a global universal identifier (GUID).

Additionally, when you check the membership of collections that are based on client computers in the SMS site, the collection does not return any members. When you run a query to locate computers that are installed as SMS clients, the query does not return any results.

When you double-click Systems Management in Control Panel in the workstation, the client may be displayed. However, the SMS site reports that the client does not exist. Therefore, installed clients cannot be managed by the SMS site.

CAUSE

This issue can occur because Network Discovery does not attempt to determine if resources that it discovers are clients of the SMS site.

When Network Discovery is configured as the only discovery method in your SMS site, computers may install the client components. However, SMS is unaware that the clients are present.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, reenable the Heartbeat Discovery option (which is enabled by default) and wait for the specified polling interval to pass. When the clients send up new discovery data, the database is updated to reflect the correct values.

MORE INFORMATION

SMS provides several different ways to discover potentially manageable resources. Network Discovery is one of these methods, and it is used to discover both the computer and non-computer resources on the network.