Do you archive or delete?

arbleb asked a question.

July 12, 2017 at 7:00 AM

New to SNOW and digging through our installation. We are out of licenses which, from what I can tell, makes getting useful data out of SNOW difficult because we have thousands of machines that are not reporting in.

Looks like we currently set machines to "inactive" as opposed to "delete". However, I see there is another option to "archive" these machines. I like the idea of archiving, BUT - it sure seems like the automated process within SNOW easily supports deleting a computer record, but archiving would require me manually checking hundreds of boxes on a regular basis and choosing archive.

Any argument for/against archiving versus deleting that justifies the manual step?

Also, if anybody knows - in the SMACC I have the following Basic settings:

QUARANTINE_ACTIVE

QUARANTINE_DAYS

QUARANTINE_DELETE

etc ...

Then I have

DEVICE_QUARANTINE_ACTIVE

DEVICE_QUARANTINE_DAYS

etc ...

Which takes precedence or should I set when trying to delete computer records?

Thank you!

Software & License Management

PaulCooper
9 years ago
As several other posters have advised, Archive is preferable to Delete - especially if you are using Snow as your Hardware register and have ISO 27001 compliance in mind as I'm sure there is a requirement to retain data records for devices for a set number of years.
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Rory_C
9 years ago
Lots of replies, but I would side with Craig Moss. I would only delete if a machine has gone and is definitely not coming back - perhaps when a destruction certificate has been received.
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Kristy Stroud (Flexera Software)
9 years ago
This is a common question that I am asked by clients and from a best practice perspective it is preferred to Archive over Delete for historical purposes, however, each business case is different. If you want to Archive but have concerns over the time involved, keep in mind that systems can be mass updated. Several clients have implemented processes to regularly (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly) search for all systems in Inactive status and mass update to Archive. This is not a time-consuming task and retains the data should it ever be needed.
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Portal User
9 years ago
We are still in the implementation phase of Snow, however in the past I have deleted Hardware information when machines have been retired, trashed or re-imaged under a different name. I suggest keeping a spreadsheet of the Hardware information and any relevant user and software information for retired machines incase you need it in the future!
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- Portal User
  9 years ago
  Same thing here. We aren't concerned about retaining retired or disposed of hardware, so we are deleting to free up licenses. Especially if you are in the implementation phase. I think hitting the ceiling on licenses is worse than retaining old data for machines not in the enterprise. After you get a handle on how many "Active" machines you should have (target total) then you'll be able to establish your final active device count and adjust licenses accordingly.
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  - Portal User
    9 years ago
    Great point Mark, that's the other bonus. You get your Snow license back for new machines! License optimisation of the tool that helps you optimise your licenses!
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    rswain
    9 years ago
    Hello - it is my understanding that once a machine is labeled "Inactive" it does not consume a Snow license. Hence you get the license back and you have historical data. Is that correct Snow? Thanks.
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    Community Manager (Flexera Software)
    9 years ago
    Hi Randy, Changing a computer to inactive will free up any software licenses for products installed on the computer, but it does still require a Snow license. Mark
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    Community Manager (Flexera Software)
    9 years ago
    Hi Randy, Changing a computer to inactive will free up any software licenses for products installed on the computer, but it does still require a Snow license. Mark
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DaveCook
9 years ago
We use the archive function and have tested a status change situation. When a system is archived and comes back online it reports itself again and creates a new object in Snow, so you don't have to worry about a situation when an archived computer comes back online. However, if it is archived again you will have two different archive objects, which to us is not a problem as it's just a snapshot in time. Archiving helps as we can look at historical data to find older assets. I can't think of any real reason to choose delete over archive unless you really don't want to see any historical data. From a licensing perspective its the same. However, I suppose if you had a very large number of assets you may want to avoid your database from growing (although unless you are uploading documents into each asset record I don't think it would grow that much). Cheers, David
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