Troubleshooting your inventory client agents
Our newly appointed director, May Turnbull, dives into some simple places to start when your inventory clients just don't want to play ball.
Published on 19th February 2021
Whilst I by no means profess to be being technically savvy when it comes to inventory tools and their client agents, there are a couple of things I have picked up in my years of dealing with inventory data that I thought I’d put out there into the universe.
When deploying client-based inventory solutions, one would be fooled to think that once you have deployed the software…that that is the end of that chapter. Client agents that once reported fine can fall-over, so these do need to be monitored.
At EasySAM we report monthly on 90-day inactive devices within customers’ inventory tools and depending on their industries; this report can often consist of hundreds of devices.
Now bearing in mind that I’m referring to client agents that did in fact successfully report in the first place and that you haven’t changed anything major (like firewalls) …here are EasySAM’s two insights regarding troubleshooting these client agents:
#1
We would recommend that removal of devices from your inventory tool be included in your current decommissioning processes. Many of our customers remove devices from their inventory tools at the same time as the accounts are disabled/moved to the relevant OU in Active Directory. This clears the waters to be able to identify client agents that are genuinely in trouble.
#2
Before looking into the individual logs for the agents (which can be very time consuming), EasySAM recommend looking at doing two things on-mass first:
Restart the Devices
For Windows devices, this can be co-ordinated through WoL (Wake-on-LAN), and there are alternative technologies here for your Apple estate. Experience has taught us that devices that aren’t restarted for long periods of time can play havoc on some services.
Reinstall the Client Agents
This may sound trivial, but you will be surprised how often this works. Pushing out the latest and greatest will ensure any old versions & corruptions are addressed. This is a task that can also be easily automated for most and should save time in addressing reporting issues on these devices.
2021 might be a good time to review not only your device retirement processes, but also perhaps procedure regarding your inventory visibility/accuracy.
If you are interested in getting a quick MOT of your SAM, be sure to check out our affordable SAMplicity MOT service.
Written by
May Turnbull
Director
