Afternoon All,

I'm planning to have our procurement admin team enter physical computer assets into SCSM as soon as they arrive through the door or maybe even as soon as the shipping note is e-mailed to them as it contains serial numbers, mac addresses, asset tags etc on it.

My question is, using the "Create Computer" task in the Configuration Items section of SCSM, does that create a physical computer that will then have details added to it (as long as the principal name matches) via SCCM & AD when the engineers deploy the device to site?

I'm asking because, as far as I can tell, the Computer (Deployed) is the class that records physical equipment and Computer records "instances" of operating systems related to the physical hardware and the default computer form doesn't seem to use that class for principal name etc.

If this is the case and I need to use Computer (Deployed) with a custom form, then "Hardware Identifier" is the key, how is this determined, how is it matched, and more importantly, how can I add an item before it's discovered, but let discovery fill in the blanks?

Thanks in advance,
SB

Travis has just posted a good blog article about this type of thing:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2010/09/24/importing-computers-via-csv.aspx

And it's also worth refering to this:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2010/06/01/understanding-the-computer-model-in-service-manager.aspx

Now from this I think that Microsoft.SystemCenter.ConfigurationManager.DeployedComputer is the physical and Microsoft.Windows.Computer is the logical.

If this is right, then how can I populate the HardwareID (Which is a Key so needed) in advance?  In Travis's example he's got 2:F99DDFC1F9E2E42981FAD46335A36D3F6C87E7C4
How is this determined, and from where?

Thanks in advance,
SB

Hi Steve

This isn't so simple... The HardwareID is generated by Configuration Manager based on a set of properties on each computer object.

You can read about the HardwareID here (in the "Managing Client Identity" section):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb693939.aspx

Hmmm.... that's going to be a problem.

I wonder.  Is the HardwareID the same as the SCCM Client GUID? (I'll check when I get access to a console).  If it is then if I was to manually create a client record in SCCM (Using the import computer wizard under OSD) then use that GUID to populate the CSV template Travis has done, that in theory should create the physical asset I'm after.

All I need to do then is automate that using Opalis.  Simples! (Not.)

So am I to asume then that using the "Create Computer" task in the SCSM console will only ever create a Logical computer, not the physical?

Trouble is, I do want to match it up to a SCCM record, just one that isn't created yet!

So we create the computer in advance using information supplied by the vendor at shipping (Serial, MAC Address, Asset Tag) and mark it as asset status = purchased.
Once it arrives we mark it as In Stock.
Once it's joined to the domain, SCCM Client installed and on the users desk we mark the Asset Status as Deployed and would then like the AD & SCCM Connectors to fill in the blanks regarding hardware, OS etc.

I tested this theory the other day, and it actually worked.  So I'm still not sure where this whole Logical vs Physical comes into it.  Maybe it's just because our Principal name is the same as our computer name/NetBIOS/DNS and Asset Tag?

Also... how does SCSM assign a logical computer to a physical computer?  In SCCM all clients have a different HardwareID, even VM's running on Physical Hardware.
e.g. PC38400 = 2:BDBBA08.... etc
       VM38400-XPMODE = 2:1F310AE...... etc

Is a logical computer just for dual boot situations rather than for Virtual Machines?

Well - it's both really.  Keep in mind that a virtual computer is a Windows computer with the IsVirtualComputer box checked.  Virtual computer  think they are regular computers except for that flag - the physical hardware will look the same for two different virtual computers running on the same physical computer.

The same is true of two different computers that are in a dual boot config on the same physical computer.

That's where the Provance solution comes in real handy.  They have a separate asset class that you map the physical computers to automatically.  So for example if you end up with two physical computers that are the same you can map them both to the same asset object.  They do this automatically by creating an asset record with a serial number and then matching the physical computer objects to the asset object by serial number.

Sorry this is horribly complicated but its really just the nature of the world that we live in today with virtual machines, virtual applications, multi-boot operating systems, boot to VHD, etc. 

Trouble is, I do want to match it up to a SCCM record, just one that isn't created yet!

So we create the computer in advance using information supplied by the vendor at shipping (Serial, MAC Address, Asset Tag) and mark it as asset status = purchased.
Once it arrives we mark it as In Stock.
Once it's joined to the domain, SCCM Client installed and on the users desk we mark the Asset Status as Deployed and would then like the AD & SCCM Connectors to fill in the blanks regarding hardware, OS etc.

I tested this theory the other day, and it actually worked.  So I'm still not sure where this whole Logical vs Physical comes into it.  Maybe it's just because our Principal name is the same as our computer name/NetBIOS/DNS and Asset Tag?

Also... how does SCSM assign a logical computer to a physical computer?  In SCCM all clients have a different HardwareID, even VM's running on Physical Hardware.
e.g. PC38400 = 2:BDBBA08.... etc
       VM38400-XPMODE = 2:1F310AE...... etc

Is a logical computer just for dual boot situations rather than for Virtual Mac

Yep, that's working fine. As soon as they join the AD, the AD connector populates data to the same object and likewise SCCM as soon as they exist in the SCCM DB. When we create these computer objects in the CMDB, we specify those attributes from start: Principalname, DNSName, NetBIOSComputerName, NetBIOSDomainname. I'm not 100% sure but I assume only the principalname, as you've said, is required so that connectors pick up the existing object.

Cheers

Alex

• Proposed as answer by Andreas BaumgartenMVP, Moderator Thursday, January 16, 2014 7:54 AM