Loosing clients in SMS console...Again!!!!

[PhilMarcum]

For the 2nd time in two weeks I've notice systems disappearing from the SMS console. I look in collections and notice only a small fraction of the assigned systems in the admin console. This happened last week and I thought it was attributed to some changes I was making to the system accounts. This cleared up on its own and the clients slowly returned to the console inspite of a site reset or restart of the component services. The same thing is happening now except I haven't made any changes to any of the accounts. When this happens the site server isn't updating and neither are any of the secondary site servers. A few hours later the clients start populating the console again and all is fine. Looking at the event logs on the site server I see instances of the event ID: 63

Source: WinMgmt
User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Description:
A provider, PolicyAgentInstanceProvider, has been registered in the WMI namespace, root\cim\Policy\S_1_5_21_123347347394789_1157493549875895_5759984984_1026, to use the LocalSystem account. This account is privilaged and the providermay cause a security violation if it does not correctly impersonate user requests.

This hampers an already dismal effort in getting the SMS advanced client installed on a large portion of the assigned systems. I have to wait hours for the database to re-populate with the client systems. This in turn prevents the helpdesk and field techs from connecting to anything in the console so this is an urgent issue for me. Therefore I'd appreciate any responses or direction on resolving this issue.

Thanks

 

[ncotton]

I don't suppose the ones "dissapearing" NOW are by any chance (i know you cant really check) the ones that DIDN'T "dissapear" last week are they?

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[PhilMarcum]

I'm thinking they're the same systems and what I notice is that these systems no longer appear in their assigned collections, the ones with the advanced client installed seem to take forever to be "re-discovered", and the site server itself is taking forever to update. I've changed my schedules to update every 2 hours but this isn't working like it probably should. Before this happened yesterday I had 5762 systems appearing with 2761 systems detected as having the client installed. Right now I have 5756 with 1742 clients installed. Also if I create a new query, assign it to a collection, and update that collection the clients take forever to appear in the collection.
I can query the components and the're running as they should. So since I can't get an accurate count of clients I can't deploy packages or do anything.

stumped!!!

 

[ncotton]

can you let us know your settings for

Heartbeat Discovery
Network Discovery
Activy Directory System Discovery
Tasks > Delete Obsolete data
Tasks > Inactive

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[PhilMarcum]

Sure:
Heartbeat Discovery: Every 1 hour
Network Discovery:
Schedule: Every 2 hours
AD Sys. Disc.: Every 1 hour
Tasks - Delete Obsolete Data: 28 days (every day)
Tasks - Inactive: 28 days (every day)

Some of the settings were changed for the purpose of troubleshooting the sms client.

 

[ncotton]

What about "Tasks > Clear Install Flags"?

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[PhilMarcum]

Every 1 day at 2am.

 

[ncotton]

change that to 5 days, just to be on the safe side. Seems like a weird scenario, but apparently there are other issues of this. Someone brought it up on MyITForum. I have been keeping my eye on it for you, but no answers there of yet either.

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[PhilMarcum]

OK this is driving me nuts! In my console I do a Show Count on the collection containing all of my systems and I see:
Total number of resources in collection: 4777
Total number of client in collection: 6
WTF!!!
Just a couple of days ago I had over 2500 clients showing in this collection. I've tried and have been able to start remote tools on a few of the clients inspite of it not showing the client installed. There are also some systems I can't do anything with.
I have a group policy that does the following on startup:
1. Add SMSAdmins group to local admins
2. Start the 1e SMS Client Health.vbs
This script, SMS Client Health, didn't seem to fully install the SMS client and emailed me on BITs and that the Admin$ was missing so to help it along I added:
3. SMS Advanced Client repair.msi

This last file checks for the SMS client, uninstalls it, and then reinstalls it. The thinking was that this policy would resolve the issue of the SMS client not installing on the systems and it seems to be working. I now can't see what's working and what isn't without the Client status. Anyone know of a way to force this to update the console?

Speaking of the console I notice that the site status isn't updating as it should and that from time to time when running SMS Service Manager I notice all components showing as Stopped and the SMS Replication Manager showing as Stopping.

Re-searching...

ANY responses are appreciated...