Prevent devices from continuing to report when the Snow Inventory Agent remains installed
When the Snow Inventory Agent remains installed on a device that is no longer under your organization’s control, the device may continue to report inventory data as long as its configured endpoint remains available.
The recommended approach is to remove the Snow Inventory Agent before a device leaves your organization’s administrative control. If removal is no longer possible, you can use a gateway sinkhole configuration to redirect the affected devices and stop them from reporting to the existing endpoint.
To redirect affected devices and prevent them from continuing to report to the current endpoint:
- Configure a Snow Inventory Gateway without a forwarding endpoint.
This gateway acts as a sinkhole for devices that still have the agent installed. - Deploy an updated agent configuration to the affected devices through the console.
Update the configuration so the devices connect to the new gateway address. - Verify that the devices are reporting to the new gateway URL or IP address.
Confirm that the updated configuration has been applied successfully. - Shut down or disable the gateway server or service.
After the devices have been redirected to the sinkhole gateway, disable it to stop further reporting.
You cannot achieve the same result by deploying a configuration containing an invalid endpoint. During configuration deployment, the connection to the endpoint is tested. If the connection fails, the new configuration is not applied, and the device continues to use its existing valid configuration.
The affected devices are redirected away from the existing inventory endpoint. After the sinkhole gateway is disabled, they can no longer report inventory data through that configuration.
This method is intended as a workaround for devices that are no longer under your administrative control. Whenever possible, use a device decommissioning process that removes the Snow Inventory Agent before ownership or administrative control of the device ends.
