Its very, very rare that I find a customer with an actual need for Software Inventory. Like Nash said, many folks assume information on installed software comes from Software Inventory, which it does not. And yes, it burns a bunch of resources when it runs if you are inventorying a large number of file names, types, and especially locations (i.e. not limiting the location to a specific directory). If you want to do a quick test of this, add a few file types to your software inventory, update your policy on a client, and run the sinv from the control panel applet. Monitor the inventory.log to see how long it takes to complete (feel free to add perfmon's for memory/cpu/io/etc if you really want to spend the time). This will be a matter of many minutes and sometimes hours, depending on the size of the disk you are scouring. Just please make sure you don't accidentally check the box to collect the files as well. Then run a full hardware inventory and monitor the same log to see how long it takes to complete. This will probably be a matter of 10-90 seconds.
From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: [mssms] RE: CCMEXEC is taking up over 3gb of RAM Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2014 17:03:33 +0000 The feature is not really broken, it is just misnamed so people end up using it poorly. It should be called File Inventory instead of Software Inventory. The push to get people to stop using it stems from the fact that customers enable it thinking they are grabbing Add/Remove Programs info, when in fact they are just storing a crap load of file metadata that may or may not actually be directly related to what is ‘installed’ on a computer. My fingers are crossed that in vNext they’ll make some feature renames to fix the confusion: “Hardware Inventory” = “System Inventory” “Software Inventory” = “File Inventory” From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Miller, Todd Sent: Friday, December 5, 2014 10:47 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [mssms] RE: CCMEXEC is taking up over 3gb of RAM How about we rally to get Microsoft to fix software inventory instead of begging everyone to stop using it? Their AV software is touching every file as it is read in and doing full scans periodically successfully, right? The index service is crawling the hard drive and maintaining a DB of file contents. Why does the SCCM team have such a hard time figuring out how to inventory software, and why are “we” all letting them off the hook? Getting everyone to stop using it is not exactly a great solution to the problem. Instead, we should be demanding a product that works well. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Daniel Ratliff Sent: Friday, December 05, 2014 9:58 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [mssms] RE: CCMEXEC is taking up over 3gb of RAM Use Compliance if you do, not SINV! http://myitforum.com/myitforumwp/2014/11/14/using-configuration-items-instead-of-software-inventory/ Daniel Ratliff From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gilmanov, Nile Sent: Friday, December 05, 2014 10:40 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [mssms] RE: CCMEXEC is taking up over 3gb of RAM I guess one more thing to inventory (file size of the latter file). Nile Gilmanov Systems Administrator Wabash National Corporation [email protected] | Office: 765.772.2691 | Mobile: 765.414.7402 From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Daniel Ratliff Sent: Friday, December 5, 2014 10:34 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [mssms] RE: CCMEXEC is taking up over 3gb of RAM We have a pretty good size inventory, and my machine has a 133MB file. Daniel Ratliff From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Heaton, Joseph@Wildlife Sent: Friday, December 05, 2014 10:26 AM To: '[email protected]' Subject: [mssms] RE: CCMEXEC is taking up over 3gb of RAM 38MB here, and I’ve never thought about that file until you mentioned it. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jeff Gortney Sent: Friday, December 05, 2014 6:34 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [mssms] RE: CCMEXEC is taking up over 3gb of RAM OK here is what I found out. CCMEXEC was reading the InventoryStore.SDF file which grew to over 4gb in size. This has to be tied to hardware inventory somehow. On a hunch, I renamed that file and rebooted the laptop. And CCMEXEC barely touched memory. It seems like this performance issue is tied to the size of this file, and the fact that the majority of my laptops in the field have only 4gb of ram on them. So when CCMEXEC tries to read a 4 GB file it starts using swap space and slows the system down. How big is everyone’s InventoryStore.sdf and how to you manage the size of that file? Jeff GORTNEY Systems and Network Support Specialist — Combustion Fives North American Combustion Inc. 4455 East 71st Street Cleveland, Ohio, 44105-5600 - United States Tel: +1 216 206 5508 Fax: +1 216 641 7852 [email protected] www.fivesgroup.com This message and any attachments are confidential and for the sole attention of the addressees. Any unauthorized use or dissemination is prohibited. Ce message et toutes pièces jointes sont confidentiels et à l'attention exclusive de ses destinataires.Toute utilisation ou diffusion non autorisée est interdite. Please think about the environment before printing this e-mail. // Merci de penser à l'environnement avant d'imprimer cet e-mail. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gilmanov, Nile Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2014 10:45 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [mssms] RE: CCMEXEC is taking up over 3gb of RAM You could also monitor it if you have SCOM… or even perhaps PerfMon.msc and monitor that service after you have taken steps to resolve. Monitoring will give you a timeline of when things go crazy. Nile Gilmanov Systems Administrator Wabash National Corporation [email protected] | Office: 765.772.2691 | Mobile: 765.414.7402 From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Heaton, Joseph@Wildlife Sent: Thursday, December 4, 2014 10:37 AM To: '[email protected]' Subject: [mssms] RE: CCMEXEC is taking up over 3gb of RAM Wow, that’s huge. My ccmexec is humming along at 30MB. I’d cycle the SMS Agent Host service, maybe something got stuck. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jeff Gortney Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2014 6:52 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [mssms] CCMEXEC is taking up over 3gb of RAM I have a user who is complaining of a slow PC. I have run procmon on the PC and noticed that CCMEXEC is taking up over 3gb of ram on the PC. What logs would be best to start looking though to find out why this is happening? Thanks for the help! Jeff GORTNEY Systems and Network Support Specialist — Combustion Fives North American Combustion Inc. 4455 East 71st Street Cleveland, Ohio, 44105-5600 - United States Tel: +1 216 206 5508 Fax: +1 216 641 7852 [email protected] www.fivesgroup.com This message and any attachments are confidential and for the sole attention of the addressees. Any unauthorized use or dissemination is prohibited. Ce message et toutes pièces jointes sont confidentiels et à l'attention exclusive de ses destinataires.Toute utilisation ou diffusion non autorisée est interdite. Please think about the environment before printing this e-mail. // Merci de penser à l'environnement avant d'imprimer cet e-mail. The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain CONFIDENTIAL material. If you receive this material/information in error, please contact the sender and delete or destroy the material/information. 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