Delete "Unclustered hosts and VMs" from "Virtual Devices and Clusters"

[kevin_christens]

We are trying to delete "Unclustered hosts and VMs" from "Virtual Devices and Clusters".  We check the check  box of item to delete, click on delete button, confirm the "Are you sure you want to delete this item?" pop-up window, and the systems says "The item is deleted successfully."

Problem is that the item is not deleted and no error is displayed.   Are we doing something incorrect?

[kclausen]

@kevin_christens - The "Delete" functionality on the Virtual Devices and Clusters view is there to unlink a VM Host from a Cluster. 

What is it you are actually trying to delete?

[kevin_christens]

@kclausen We are trying to remove an old device.  The device is not in inventory, only in Virtual Devices and Clusters.   How do we remove/delete this device.

[kclausen]

Any Host or Virtual Machine that you see in this view must be an Inventory Device. 

If the inventory device has a status of "Ignored", then you will not see it on the Active Inventory view.  Try searching for that specific virtual machine on the All Inventory view.

[kevin_christens]

Interesting.  The device is not in our ALL inventory, only in asset and in Unclustered hosts and VMs.  We probably had the item deleted from inventory since was so old.   Now it only appears in Unclustered hosts and VMs view.

[kevin_christens]

Maybe I don't understand the structure of the clustered VMWare tables but we want to be able to remove/delete items.   One item in question, is visible in ComplianceComputer_MT, but is only in asset and not in inventory.  How can we get rid of these unclustered items?

[kclausen]

@kevin_christens - Can you please verify what version of FNMS that you have?  If you could also attach a screen shot of what you are seeing on the Virtual Devices and Clusters view.

[kevin_christens]

We are running FNMS 

Product version: FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R2

Release number: 16.0.1.3

From the screenshot, you can see it says the device was deleted but it remains.   If I go to the inventory screen, the device does not exist but does exist as an asset.

[kclausen]

Based on your image, you have this "VM Host" Inventory Device linked to a Hardware Asset.  Therefore, you need to start with the Hardware Asset, as this will drive the status of the Inventory Device:
1) Navigate to Hardware Assets > All Assets
2) Search for 10-120-53-50
3) Update the status of the Hardware Asset to Retired or Disposed and Save.

4) Go back to the Virtual Devices and Clusters view and see if it is still there.

[kevin_christens]

The asset was marked as "retired" in 2019 and changed to "In Storage" in Nov, 2020.

Is there a possible issue that we need to address?  Is there and SQL script that can easily show devices/assets that are incorrect?  Is it correct the Asset is in ComplianceComputer without inventory or discovery records?

Thank you for your help on this?

[kclausen · Accepted solution]

I just realized that the Virtual Devices and Clusters view by default shows both Active and Ignored inventory devices.  So even if your VM Host inventory device is set to a status of "Ignored" it will still appear on your view.  To resolve this:

1 - Go to Column Chooser and add the "Computer Status" column to the view
2 - Add a filter on the new field to only show "Active" devices.

[kevin_christens]

That works.  Is there a way to delete/unlink non-active devices from this view without deleting the asset record?

[kevin_christens]

I spoke too soon.  We still have a few active records that we are not able to delete/un-link.   See attached screenshot of the records.

[kclausen]

Those have a fairly recent Last Inventory Date - are you sure these are no longer active? 

If these hosts are no longer active:
1) Change the status of the Asset record to Disposed/Retired, which will change the status of the Inventory Device to Ignored.
2) This would not be a best practice, but you can also to to All Inventory, find the host, unlink it from the Hardware Asset and then you can delete the inventory device.  However, you will still have an Active Hardware Asset for that host.

What is your current process for maintaining your device inventory?  In other words for Desktops, Laptops, Servers and Hosts - how are you maintaining the status of the devices in FNMS so that they are no longer counted as Active Inventory that has software consuming against your licenses?

[kevin_christens]

Asset and inventory device status is maintained in ServiceNow and flows down to FNMS via a Business Adapter.   Inventory records are deleted if inventory has not been seen for 90 days.  We have a scheduled task that fills #Computer table with old records and then calls dbo.DeleteComputers to delete the devices from Inventory.  The delete process does nothing with Asset records.   We are reviewing the assets that still show active to make sure those are correct statuses.