Keeping inactive clients alive in CM12 for fast Patching and Distributions

In order to keep our CM12 clean, we normally enable “Delete Inactive Client Discovery Data” under Site Maintenance properties. By default this is disabled, but when enabled it is set to 90, unless you change that. This removes the clients that are inactive from the CM12 console every 90 days unless again, you change that setting.

However, this presents a challenge for organizations that have laptops or remote users that remain offline longer than what that’s set for.   Or spare machines that get stuck in closets or storages for long periods of time. But are required to get deployments or patch deployments fast.   Because when you plug them in the network, it takes a while before they fall back in their collections after they get deleted, so that they can quickly get their deployments or patch deployments that they deserve.

So to keep these machines alive in the console, remember in CM12, these machines do not get deleted from the database. They just get their Decommissioned0 set to 1, and disappear from the console. So the trick is, just keep their decommissioned0 set to 0!

In our environment, we leverage SCORCH to detect these machines by executing SQL query below:

select Name0, Decommissioned0

from System_DISC

where Distinguished_Name0 LIKE 'CN=%,OU=Laptops,OU=Computers,OU=LOB,OU=ORG,DC=jeff,DC=com'

AND Decommissioned0='1'

We then resolve it by:

UPDATE System_DISC

SET Decommissioned0 = '0'

where Distinguished_Name0 LIKE 'CN=%,OU=Laptops,OU=Computers,OU=LOB,OU=ORG,DC=jeff,DC=com'

AND Decommissioned0='1'

Then these guys never leave their collections J