Client Management Suite

If I use the predefined software/hardware delta inventory policies that are scheduled to run weekly/monthly on Mondays at 6 p.m. in Inventory Solution 7.1 SP2, what will happen if a computer(s) is powered off at that time?  Most of the desktops in my environment are off by 6 p.m. so was concerned whether delta inventories would ever run on these machines.  I would hope they'd run the next time the computer is powered up but got confused with the documentation on ASAP behavior and recurring inventories.  Thanks in advance!

This all depends on the schedule you define, but if you use the weekly schedule, they will gather inventory when they are next turned on, assuming you don't choose options like "Only if available at the exact scheduled time" and so forth.

I always clone the bult in tasks.

Built-in policies will not run as missed tasks if the resource is off during the scheduled execution time. These built-in policies are so inflexible they shouldn't even be included in the platform!

In order to get resources to run inventory if they are off you need to create task based inventory policies. Policies based on tasks allow for computers to run the missed task when they come back online as long as the next scheduled task exectuon time has not occured. This way duplicate scheduled tasks will not run sequentially.

We had a hard time figuring out why inventory was always missing from devices even though the agent was active and plug-ins were present.

Another options is to use a power management tool to wake-up the resources before the scheduled execution time.

There appears to be conflicting responses.  So if I use the default "Collect Full Inventory" policy and the predefined Monday at 6 p.m. weekly schedule (i.e. I don't set a custom schedule), will this or won't this run the inventory if the PC is never on at the scheduled time?  Thanks!

In 7.1 (incl. 7.1 SP2), inventory policies are task based policies.

So if you use a predefined inventory policy with a predefined schedule, and your targeted computers are off during the scheduled execution time, the policy gathers inventory and sends the data to Notification Server as soon as the client computer gets turned on and the agent gets updated.

For example, if "Collect full inventory" policy is scheduled to run every Monday at 6 p.m., and the computer is off at the scheduled time, then as soon as the computer gets started on Tuesday and the agent gets updated, the policy runs on the computer and inventory gets posted to NS.

The same also applies to the custom inventory policies that are enabled and scheduled to run daily/weekly/monthly, and the custom inventory policies with the custom schedules. 

Irina, I hate to disagree with you but I actually have the above ticket number confirming this behavior.

Please reserach this ticket and respond back to the thread accordingly. The responses I received from Andrew and Jeremy in PM were...

Benjamin, thank you for the info. I will contact inventory team and research the issue.

I believe the change has now come where the Custom Schedule option is now available where that was not an option previously for the default Inventory policies.

I am not sure when this was added as we neglected ever revisiting the default policies once I implemented task based inventory policies.

However, I believe the behavior is still consistent with any version of 7.1....

When using the default Daily/Weekly/Monthly scheduling option there is no flexibility with the time at which it will run; it is hardcoded to run only at 18:00 hours. The only way to change this is to use the Custom Schedule option.

There may have also been a change to the underlying XML code which properly implements the compliance check of the policy. But I cannot confirm this without input from Dev.

FYI: Without a solid concensus, last week I enabled just the "Collect Full Inventory" policy with the predefined Monday at 18:00 weekly schedule.  I created 3 test VMs (XP, Win7, Win7 x64) where a full inventory was automatically done ASAP as expected since the "Inventory Plug-in Install" policy was enabled.

These VMs weren't powered on yesterday (Monday) at 6 p.m. but after I fired them up today (Tuesday), it appears inventory indeed ran if you believe AeXAgentActivate on each machine and the 'N' Most Recent Inventory Captures report.  Naturally my SMP server runs 24x7 where inventory did run on it last night and the policy didn't do an untimely kick off on my XP VM which I did have powered up midday yesterday (Monday) to do some unrelated testing.

Hopefully others can confirm my findings with their fully-patched (as of 2/14/12) SMP 7.1 SP2 servers.  If the precanned policy/schedule works like this, I'm a happy camper.  Unless the dialogue box has an option to only run at the scheduled time, I think it makes more sense that any policy should kick off the next time the machine comes online.

This confirms my understanding.  Best practice is to run Full monthly and Delta weekly, with Delta happening on different days of the week, and neither landing on the same day as a full inventory.

You can get the Full to run on the first Tuesday of every month and the Delta to run on the second, third, fourth and last Tuesday.

If you pick the same day each week you know that you can run the most up to date reports based on that day.

For production purposes, a weekly full inventory is usually unnecessary so I used the predefined "Monthly" schedule (i.e. Monday at 18:00) for the full and enabled a weekly delta s/w inventory with a custom schedule set to every Tuesday at 18:00 a couple weeks back.  Happened to check status today and noticed that my weekly deltas haven't been running; even on my SMP server which is on 24x7!

Due to an issue with no dialogue box coming up with the Add Condition button under the Filter Expressions tab during report/filter creation, I went through Symantec Tech Support and applied SMP 7.1 SP2 Rollup v2.  Due to other issues I have since experienced, I'm guessing this custom scheduling problem is related to the v2 rollup I applied.  The v3 rollup (major release) is expected in a few days but was just wondering whether others who applied the v2 rollup have also noticed that your custom schedules don't work for your inventory policies?

Had a side question on the weird (to me, anyway) verbage attached to the predefined monthly schedule.  Exactly when is "Repeat monthly on Mon of week 1 at 18:00"?  If this doesn't simply mean the first Monday of the month, then what?

My understanding -- and I should really test this -- is that it's the first week's Monday.  I have no idea what happens if the first week of the month starts on, for example, a Thursday, as it did this month.

After a custom schedule for my weekly s/w inventory delta wasn't working, I just used the predefined weekly schedule in hopes that this would run.  Unfortunately this didn't help where beyond the delta which was run ASAP after I initially enabled the policy, none have ran since; even on my server.

I'll have to wait till next month to really confirm but looks like my monthly full collect is the only thing that's working.  It last ran Monday, 3/5/12, at 6 p.m. on the SMP server and ran on the morning of Tuesday, 3/6, since I didn't have my test VMs running the day before.  Guess I'll have to open up yet another case with Symantec...ho hum.

Can anyone run the Remote Altiris Agent Diagnostics tool and hit one of your SMP 7.1 clients when you get a chance?  I ran diagnostics on one of my test XP Pro VMs and checked out the "Policies" tab.  My monthly "Collect Full Inventory" policy is listed which has been running fine thus far but I don't see a "Collect Delta Software Inventory" policy.  Shouldn't this be listed as well; assuming you have your delta s/w inventory policy enabled?

I didn't clone my inventory policies, and I have found in testing that if machines are off during the scheduled time (whether it's daily/weekly/monthly or a custom schedule), they do run next time the policy next time they're on.  

I had mine set to weekly/monthly vs custom but the reason I didn't like this is my machines are all off at 6pm, I don't want to wake them up, but I also don't want all machines running inventory at startup (because the 6pm was missed).  This was happening and although it's not a memory hog, with everything else happening during a computer startup/login, I just prefer to choose a time during the day and if a machine is off or asleep, it will run the next time it powers on.  

I'm CMS 7.1 SP2, I ran RAAD on one of my clients (win7 ent sp1) and under policies I see both deltas and the full inventory.

Thanks for the feedback!  This confirms my suspicions that something's not quite right on my server.  I'm waiting for tech support to get back to me on this.

Clint,

I too applied the v2 rollup and I have also noticed that custom inventory schedules no longer work properly. I have my Inventory policies to run once on particular days of the week or month and now they run every 3 hours! I just placed my call to Tech Support to get the v3 rollup. Hopefull that will resolve my problems.

In regard to my delta software inventory collect not running, found that my target was mysteriously missing from both my software and hardware delta policies.  Perhaps I deleted them without realizing it although they're intact on my test SMP server so not sure exactly what happened on my production box.

As expected, the delta collects ran ASAP on my test workstation VMs after I manually initiated an Update request from the Altiris Agent GUI on each client where my server automatically ran the policy during its periodic check-in cycle.  I left the predefined weekly schedule set so the real test is whether the delta s/w collects will automatically run after Monday at 6 p.m. when I power up my VMs.  Since my server's on 24x7, I should be able to see on Tuesday morning that my collect ran the previous night.

I know this isn't recommended but I have my full and delta s/w collect policies set to the predefined monthly and weekly schedules, respectively.  This means at the start of each month, both policies will kick off at the same time.  I'm guessing the tasks may fire off one at a time although this will chew up more resources on the clients nonetheless.

Anyway, I didn't want to use a custom schedule for my delta s/w collect because of my previous experience where it appeared a policy wouldn't run if the machine was off at the scheduled time.  I've seen different responses on predefined versus custom schedule behavior where inconsistencies may be due to the patch level of Inventory Solution and now the SMP 7.1 SP2 v2 or v3 pointfix rollups which I've applied to fix other issues.  Has anyone running the v3 rollup have a "custom" weekly schedule enabled that runs the next time the resource comes online?

For my inventory needs, figured I'd do a weekly software delta and a monthly full collect without enabling a hardware delta since the full collect should gather h/w info as well which isn't expected to change very often.  So...why did the Altiris devs hardcode Monday at 18:00 hours into BOTH the predefined monthly and weekly schedules?

OK, I'll take one for the team (hehe) and try a custom weekly schedule for my delta software inventory collect on my server.  Hopefully my policy doesn't run every 3 hours as well.  Again, I'm running SMP 7.1 SP2 with the v3 rollup (3/15/12).  I'll let everyone know how this goes next week Wednesday since I set my custom schedule to run every Tuesday at 18:00 hours to not clash with my full collect running on the first Monday of each month at 18:00.

I powered on my test VM workstations today (Wednesday) after setting a custom Tuesday at 6 p.m. weekly delta software collect where they all ran just fine!  Both the SMP agent GUI on each machine and the SMC reflected that my deltas did indeed run.

So to recap...I'm on SMP 7.1 SP2 with the 3/17/12 v3 pointfix rollup where it appears for this patch level that a custom schedule for inventory does indeed run at the time set (as evidenced on my SMP server) or when the resource comes online the next time.  I'm still waiting for the v4 rollup (due in April) to fix the Add button in a filter expression's Advanced Mode so hope this doesn't break something else like v2 did.