Keep in mind that the problem with SW inventory is the 4 hour timeout (runtime). Once the 4 hour time hits, everything the computer inventory is thrown away! Yes I said it is thrown away. The result will never be returned to CM. This allows for old data to get struck in the CM database and it also means that you might have clients with no results when you should. Therefore it also means that you can't trust the data as you will never know if the data is still valid or has all computers.
On top of that while SW inventory is running, it will block all other inventory tasks (HW inv and Heartbeat), because SW inventory is a low priority task, it could take days for it to complete or hit the timeout. So how do you inventory each of those? (Eg. Apache Tomcat, Apache Maven, Eclipse) To be honest, I have not looked for those recently, but why not use a CI for them? At least a CI will not stop the other inventory tasks, generally as CI will complete in a few seconds. My quick google search for Apache Tomcat suggest it runs a service, this is collected by HW inventory by default. Will that do, I'm not sure. But I do know that run SW inventory with *.exe and/or *.dll on all hard drives will take forever to run. So you will need to review your SW data to ensure that it is correct. Garth Jones Chief Architect Configuration Manager/SCCM Reporting<https://www.enhansoft.com/> From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Edward Woo Sent: Friday, June 23, 2017 5:48 PM To: mssms@lists.myitforum.com Subject: [mssms] RE: Hardware Inventory While SW inventory is basically a file inventory and the recommendation is to use HW inventory, how do you handle software that do not write data into Add/Remove Programs like open source software that are installed using ZIP files? (Eg. Apache Tomcat, Apache Maven, Eclipse, etc) Do you need to manually create CI for every application or is there a more automated way to determine what is present on the systems out there? (With SW inventory, I can just look for all systems with eclipse.exe and use that info to see how many instances of it is present and where they are presently stored.) Thanks, Edward From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Jason Sandys Sent: Friday, June 23, 2017 11:18 AM To: mssms@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:mssms@lists.myitforum.com> Subject: [mssms] RE: Hardware Inventory Hardware inventory. Software Inventory in ConfigMgr is a file inventory and does not necessarily reflect actually installed software. If you need to know about explicit files on a system, like all .psts, then software inventory is great. For generic scans of all files though, it's not very efficient and has a high cost in terms of db space and client impact for not a lot of useful info. Configuration Items are usually also a much better choice as well. J From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Mead, Renae (DTMB) Sent: Friday, June 23, 2017 12:52 PM To: mssms@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:mssms@lists.myitforum.com> Subject: [mssms] RE: Hardware Inventory Thank you. We currently have heartbeat discovery set to daily. What do you use for SW inventory if not ConfigMgr? From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Garth Jones Sent: Friday, June 23, 2017 9:09 AM To: mssms@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:mssms@lists.myitforum.com> Subject: [mssms] RE: Hardware Inventory In general, I recommend HW to be setup daily and SW inventory to be disabled, as it is useless! If SW is not disabled then set to every 14 days. BTW Heartbeat discovery I also recommend be set to daily too. Keep in mind that ConfigMgr is NOT a CMDB. Garth Jones Chief Architect Configuration Manager/SCCM Reporting<https://www.enhansoft.com/> From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Mead, Renae (DTMB) Sent: Friday, June 23, 2017 8:55 AM To: mssms@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:mssms@lists.myitforum.com> Subject: [mssms] Hardware Inventory I'm curious how often everyone is running hardware inventory? We have about 50,000 machines in our environment running hardware and software inventory every 4 days. We are getting rid of our asset management system and upper management wants ConfigMgr to replace it. Thanks, Renae Mead DTMB IS OA Enterprise Services mea...@michigan.gov<mailto:mea...@michigan.gov> (517) 636-0761 Office (517) 388-2737 Mobile
