How does SLM decide what is a 'device'?

DavidH asked a question.

June 17, 2018 at 7:00 AM

Hi everybody,

When you view Application Details in SLM, there are various tabs, for example: Computers, Users, Devices, etc...

I've noticed that we have a few Windows Desktops (eg Windows 10 Pro with Snow Agent 5.3.0) which appear in SLM under the "Devices" tab rather than the "Computers" tab. I'm wondering how SLM decides what is a Computer and what is a Device on this page?

I was surprised to see Windows 10 Desktop PCs being listed as "Devices"... Does anybody know why? I even checked to make sure that Snow Inventory marks the "Is Portable" flag to false for these machines.

(We're on SLM v8.3.01 and Snow Inventory v5.4.00)

Regards, David

stuartlee
8 years ago
Hi David The SLM User Guide (p82) says this about Devices: "A device is a computer or object that has been connected to one or more remote desktop servers and/or virtual desktops. A device could be either an inventoried computer or a non-inventoried object." So a machine with an agent on could appear in the Computers section, and also the Devices section if it has acessed remote servers over Terminal services etc There is a column for each device to say whether it is an inventoried computer or not. Regards Stuart
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- DavidH
  8 years ago
  Hi , thanks for finding that documentation. It seems to indicate that these desktops should appear on the Computers tab as well as the Devices tab, I think. What I am seeing is these Desktops appearing only under the Devices tab. Yet on the Devices tab, the inventoried column is ticked . That doesn't make sense to me... unless I'm missing something? It looks like that these machines don't fit into either the "inventoried computer" or "non-inventoried object" categories. Although, I guess my biggest concern is that we have Desktops with Agents on, that don't show up as "Computers". Regards, David
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  - Portal User
    8 years ago
    The fact that the inventoried column is ticked means that there was a computer with the same name in the all computers list when the device was created (during data update job). If the computer has been removed after the creation of the device. Then the devices might show as inventoried but the computer is gone.
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  - stuartlee
    8 years ago
    Hi David If the inventoried column on the Devices tab is ticked, which would indicate to me it has an agent on, then if you take a example desktop listed, you should be able to search and find it under both: Computers Menu -> List all Computers and Computers Menu -> List all Devices section Your original question was around looking at the Application Details page - was the application in question one of the applications beginning "TS-"? You would normally see the Devices tab on the Application Details tab if the application metric was based on for example: Total Devices, and the data on the tabs would apply to that specific application. Stuart
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    DavidH
    8 years ago
    Hi ‌, Thanks. Yes, you are correct, these computers definitely have agents on them (v5.3.0). But the application in question is not one of the "TS-" ones (although there are other "TS-" applications showing on these machines). I believe the application is executed directly on the computer - although it is launched from a network share. These machines do indeed show under both: Computers->List all Computers and Computers->List all Devices . So that looks fine, and is what I would expect. However, it's on the Application Details page, where they only show under Devices. Is that expected behaviour? Regards, David
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  - SamuelBaughan
    8 years ago
    Hi David, That could be due to some computers connecting to Terminal Services but never pulled into SLM. They would show as devices but not as computers. Several possibile reasons to this: 1)the agent is not running properly on the client, 2)the agent cannot upload the inventory file to the repository, 3)not enough Snow licenses (a Device is not scanned so it does not require a Snow license but a Computer does) ... Maybe a starting point would be to track down those 3 options above and rule them out. Only then you can conclude that there is an issue. Maybe that has already been checked, I'm just adding that for reference for future readers of this thread. Regards
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    DavidH
    8 years ago
    Thanks Sam, good thinking. But since these computers do show up in SLM under Computers->List all Computers they must be pulled in correctly. So I think we can safely rule out these 3 options. But on the Application Details page they only show as Devices, which looked strange to me. Regards, David
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