SCCM 2012 Active Directory System Discovery - How does it find systems?

I have setup System Discovery for the forest and have not limited the view of the forest in any way.  Also I have it to setup to discover everything, no limits on the number of days since last check-in. But I have some objects that haven't checked into the domain in years that are enabled (yes i want to delete them) and others are disabled that don't show up.  If there is a discovered object that I disable in AD, I run a full discovery and it still found.

My question is for this discovery, what criteria does SCCM look for?  I assume that it authenticates to the domain with the supplied user account and reads Active Directory and pulls objects.  From there, does it pull Disabled objects or leave them be?  If a client hasn't checked in in over 90 (or any number) days, does it discard that automatically? I'm just trying to understand the discovery process.

August 9th, 2012 2:40am

it should look for objects that are in AD and also in DNS. When you use the 90 days rules, those objects will not be deleted from the ConfigMgr database (that's a site maintenance rule), the discovery process will just not discover the object.
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August 9th, 2012 5:56am

Does it also look at Disabled objects or do those get ignored?
August 9th, 2012 12:23pm

Disabled objects are ignored.

Discovery is not a synch though. ConfigMgr won't delete a resource in its DB if it finds that object later deleted, disabled, moved, etc.

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August 9th, 2012 1:07pm

it should look for objects that are in AD and al
October 9th, 2012 11:20am

Correct. (At least that's definitely the way it worked in 2007 and what the 2012 documentation says also. I have an open question to the product group right now to verify that it hasn't changed at in 2012 with the inclusion of the new filters).
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October 9th, 2012 2:50pm

Hi Kent,

I wanted to confirm that by saying the 90days rule will not delete the objects in the DB but will it remove those objects from the SCCM console?

October 16th, 2012 5:20pm

What's shown in the console is from the DB thus they are synonymous in this context. So, no. As Kent said, nothing is removed from ConfigMgr by discovery -- discovery, as its name implies, "discovers" resources, nothing more, nothing less.
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October 16th, 2012 7:20pm

Jason, thanks for the confirmation
October 18th, 2012 6:27am

What is the difference between an Inactive and Obsolete client. What state does a object/computer go into if the resource is deleted from Active Directory but still in SCCM?
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November 11th, 2013 5:34pm

An inactive object is one that has been explicitly marked as inactive. There are only two defined ways that a computer resource can be marked as inactive: using Client Status Reporting and when an object is marked obsolete it is also marked as inactive.

Resources get marked as obsolete when another resource with the same hardware id is created.

November 11th, 2013 6:30pm

Hi Jason,

I know this is an old thread but did you ever find out if it works the same in SCCM 2012?  I have a situation right now where there are more computers showing in SCCM 2012 than SCCM 2007 and I am trying to make them match.  I checked a few of the systems that are in SCCM 2012 but not in SCCM 2007 and the names are not resolving.  There are stale entries in AD for these systems.

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April 14th, 2015 3:48pm

Yes, this is the same in 2012. AD System Discovery performs a DNS lookup on all system objects before it creates a DDR for them. Note however, that AD Group Discovery will also discover computer objects but does not perform a DNS lookup on them before creating a DDR. You should view the properties of resources where you are unsure why they have been discovered and verify which discovery method created the DDR.
April 16th, 2015 11:30am

Awesome, thanks!
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April 16th, 2015 12:01pm

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