When Snow Inventory reaches the license limit, snowpacks are moved to Error folder and data is missing in Snow License Manager

Inventory may stop reporting in Snow License Manager (SLM) if the license limit has reached maximum capacity and the customer has more Inventory than the licenses that they have purchased.  Symptoms experienced could be:

• Snowpack files sent to the Inventory server but move to the error folder.
• You might see some of the machines greyed-out in Inventory console.

Snow Inventory Server and Snow License Manager

Whatever we inventoried in SnowInventory is actually saved in inv.DataClient table in SnowInventory database. The inventory server license validation checks the number of machines in the inv.DataClient table in SnowInventory.

You might see some of the machines are greyed-out in Inventory console.

Computers are greyed out because an inventory scan result has not yet been processed, this can happen for 3 different reasons:

1. The server is aware of the computer, but no inventory has yet been performed. 
When the inventory agent first is installed, it performs a "heartbeat" with the server on a regular basis (configurable with the setting http.poll_interval). The heartbeat does not contain a scan result, so until the first scan is scheduled and received, the computer will show up as grey.

2. The maximum unit count granted by the license has been reached. 
When the license cap has been reached, no additional inventory results will be processed so the overage computers will be grey.

3. The inventory result is corrupt. 
Very rare but could theoretically happen.

In this scenario the snowpack files will be sent to the Inventory server, but instead of processing, the files will move to the error folder.  When reviewing the snowagent logs you will see that the license limit has excee

Examples:

• A customer may have a license for 1000 units but they have Snow Agents gradually deployed more than 1000 machines
• A customer may have old machines still in system that have been decommissioned but are not cleaned up and so therefore still using the licenses.

In those scenarios the expectation may be that the Inventory should keep updating as normal for the number of license that have been purchased.  However what actually happens is that the Inventory stops.

The resolution for this is to check for and clean up old Inventory to free up licenses or buy more licenses.

See also Does archiving a machine free up licenses?