Hello,

I am just looking for some tips on how to keep SCCM console clean from all those phantom computers, which are not active but are still there in AD. Here are the discovery settings and delete settings in my environment.

Heartbeat discovery: Daily

AD System Discovery: On Saturday 3 PM

Delete Inactive Client Discover Data: Sunday 3:45 PM. Delete items older than 7 Days

For some reason, even though the computer has not connected to SCCM server in a while, they still appear in SCCM console with Client = No. I understand that AD System Discovery keeps adding them back even though HB Disc. says that the computer is inactive.

Does the Delete Inactive Client Discovery Data take into account when the computer was discovered using AD Sys Disc.? If so, then it makes sense that the clients would never get deleted from SCCM DB based on my scheduling. 

Any tips are appreciated.

Thanks.

You will have to get the computers out of AD or at least out of DNS. Preferably both. I suggest using oldcmp.exo for that cleanup task.

Heartbeat Discovery does not say a computer is inactive, in fact the only way a client in ConfigMgr will ever be marked as inactive is if it become obsolete also. You can, however, use Client Status Reporting (part of R2 and R3) to mark them as inactive based upon defined thresholds. Once Inactive, then the Delete Inactive task will delete them but AD System Discovery will just recreate them if they are valid AD objects and are resolvable via DNS. As John pointed out, your first step is to clean up AD by deleting or disabling staled objects or moving them to an OU not with the discovery scope (oldcmp can do all of these).

John and Jason, thanks for your replies. I figured that it was the only way, but not sure what other people facing the same issue were doing. So I thought I would ask the question here.

Jason, I am a bit confused by your reply saying "HB discovery doesnt say a computer is inactive". But my understanding of HB discovery is that if the site server doesnt hear anything from a client for x number of days, then it is deemed inactive and hence removed from the database. Isnt that the case?

Nope. As mentioned, only Client Status Reporting marks a client inactive (and if a client is marked obsolete).

HB, or lack thereof rather, will set client = no which will result in the record being removed during a maintenance task. Slightly different than client = inactive but I think it gets you what you are trying to accomplish.