will device not get inventoried if it have duplicate serial number?

[sasikumar_r]

Hi All,

We recently come across an issue with inventorying a device. Agent is collecting & uploading the inventory successfully for a device in question. On the database side the files are getting processed and able to see its record in Inventory DB but after reconcile the machine is not getting created in the Compliance DB, due to which it is not appearing on the UI.

On troubleshooting we identified that there is a device with same serial number is already reporting on the UI. Except Serial number all the other attributes are different. Customer confirmed that they have taken copy of the original machine because of which both devices are having same serial number.

I suspect due to the duplicate serial number the devices is getting rejected from getting created on the compliance DB. Is anyone faced similar issue? if so kindly provide your valuable suggestion on how to get that device inventoried.

We are 2019 R2.1 version and Devices on which we are facing this isssue is on Hyper-v.

Thank you
Sasi

[jjensen]

Hello @sasikumar_r,

You mentioned "We are 2019 R2.1 version" - is this the version of the agents running on the devices involved? If you are running 2019 R2 (14.0) or later, then the agent will have a generated AgentID which should prevent many kinds of 'undesirable' merging scenarios.

This thread has some useful information on how the AgentID is generated per device: https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Forum/Questions-on-the-FlexNet-inventory-agent-unique-identifier/td-p/137758

Another question - if you inspect the ImportedComputer staging table in the Compliance DB, do you observe the device reported in there?

HTH,
Joseph

[sasikumar_r]

Hi @jjensen ,

Thank you for the response. Yeah the devices are installed with Agents 14.1 version.

Both original and copy machines is generating the NDI files with different Agentid,  but the still the device is not getting created on the compliancecomputer table.

I could see the device on the ImportedComputer table but not on the compliance computer table.

Thank you

Sasi

[jjensen]

What is the ComplianceComputerID column of the ImportedComputer record? This will tell you which ComplianceComputer record it is being linked to.

HTH,
Joseph

[sasikumar_r]

Hi @jjensen ,

ImportedComputer table do not have compliancecomputerid column. Attached is the result for your reference.

Thank you

Sasi

[jjensen]

@sasikumar_r - ImportedComputer table does have a ComplianceComputerID column (see pg. 674 - 678 of attached schema reference) - or do you mean that the ComplianceComputerID is NULL in your case?

It appears there is no attachment to your post.

HTH,
Joseph

[sasikumar_r]

Hi @jjensen ,

my bad, missed to attach the file. Attaching it now.

Yeah i could see the compliancecomputerid column and you are right it is showing NULL Value.

Please check and let me know for any clarification.

Thank you

Sasi

[jjensen]

@sasikumar_r  - My initial reaction is that the Writers process of the reconciliation may be discarding this device (hence the NULL ComplianceComputerID), however it is not immediately clear why. I am doubtful that a duplicate serial number would be the problem.

I'd definitely recommend opening a support ticket so that it can be investigated in more detail. Once it is resolved, it'd be great if you could update this thread with the findings, just in case anyone experiences something similar in future.

HTH,

Joseph

[sasikumar_r]

Hi @jjensen 

Yeah sure, i will raise a case & will update the solution on this thread once the issue is resolved.

Thank you for your time 🙂

Sasi

[sasikumar_r]

Hi All,

We have received the below solution from the support for the duplicate serial no.  device importing issue.

" This is actually the default behavior if there are exactly two computers with the same serial number, the oldest one is marked as a duplicate and not imported. The reason for this logic is to handle machine re-imaging scenarios automatically and can be controlled via the MaxDuplicateImportedComputerSerialNo ComplianceSetting (default 2). The behavior can be disabled by changing the setting to 1 by running a query against the Compliance DB like so:

update compliancesetting set SettingValue = 1 where settingname like 'MaxDuplicateImportedComputerSerialNo'

"

However we have not used this solution since we are in multi tenant and changing the above value impact all the customers. However posting this since it could be helpful for on prem users.

Thank you

Sasi

[flexeranoob]

 seem to be having a similar challenge, but we have a slightly different issue.  We have computers with same hostname and same seriano in the Importedcomputer table, as well as computers with different hostname and same serialno as well. If we were to change the setting as proposed in the solution above, will that imply that computers with same hostname/serial number from ImportedComputer will also appear twice in the web UI?

[ChrisG]

One clarification on the MaxDuplicateImportedComputerSerialNo setting: in a multi-tenant system (including Flexera One ITAM) the setting is tenant-specific, so it can be set to different values for different tenants through the ComplianceTenantSetting view.

For example:

EXEC dbo.SetTenant 'ACME Corp'

UPDATE s
SET SettingValue = '1' -- Default is '2'
FROM dbo.ComplianceTenantSetting s
    JOIN dbo.SettingName sn ON sn.SettingNameID = s.SettingNameID
WHERE sn.Name ='MaxDuplicateImportedComputerSerialNo'