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2 Posts tagged with the sms_addon tag
Tal Elgar
1

If you have experienced WMI related issues with the SMS Addon or are worried about potential WMI related issues you might want to read this...

The SMS Addon relies on calls to the WMI service for interacting with SMS and it calls the WMI service more than you might think. For some customers it has been observed that the default frequencies of these calls coupled with the amount of data/entries (such as number of advertisements, number of collections etc.) causes a very high load on the WMI service and a subsequent crash of the service that requires a full reboot of the entire Server (not just the service). Obviously that is not an acceptable situation for a production customer, however there are 8 specific instances where the SMS Addon makes calls to the WMI service which can be tweaked to provide a potential resolution.

You won't see these 8 registry keys in the registry as the SMS Addon uses default values inside the SMS Addon code. You would need to generate these keys yourselves and provide values in order to override the defaults used. The list of these keys and the what they are for are as follows:

 

All registry keys need to be created in: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Intel\Intel(R) AMT Add-on\GEN\ folder and Dword values need to be entered in minutes. Any value but 0 is legal. There is no disable value and hence 'disabling' is achieved by setting a very high value such as 5 (2,628,000 minutes) or 10 years (5,256,000 minutes).

 

These is the list of the scheduled WMI related operations:

 

  1. NewSysScanInterval used to identify new systems in SMS (discovered by SMS discovery methods like AD discovery) – by default runs every 60 minutes – not needed if no systems are managed by SMS Site (such as Central SMS Site).

  1. DeletedSysScanIntervalused to remove information about systems removed from SMS – by default runs every 60 minutes – not needed if no systems are managed by SMS Site (such as Central SMS Site).
  2. SCSSystemScanIntervalused to find new machines in SCS – by default runs every 60 minutes – not needed if no systems are managed by SMS Site (such as Central SMS Site) and also this doesn’t apply if add-on isn’t integrated with SCS.
  3. SystemChangeMembershipScanIntervalused to identify systems membership in groups (for system defense settings) – by default runs every 60 minutes – not needed if no systems are managed by SMS Site (such as Central SMS Site) or if system defense isn't being used.
  4. OffLineSystemScanInterval – used to run commands on machines that were offline (used for system defense and event registration) – by default runs every 5 minutes – not needed if no systems are managed by SMS Site (such as Central SMS Site) or if system defense or event registration aren't being used.
  5. SCSrequestScanInterval – used for tracking requests from add-on to SCS (unprovision, reprovision) – by default runs every 5 minutes – not needed if no systems are managed by SMS Site (such as Central SMS Site) or no un/reprovision commands are run from the add-on; also this doesn’t apply if add-on isn’t integrated with SCS.
  6. UpdatedAdvertisementsScanIntervalused for reading advertisement definitions – by default runs every 2 minutes – not needed if no systems are managed by SMS Site (such as Central SMS Site) or if advertisement wakeup or system defense aren't being used. Runs frequently to pick up any changes to advertisement settings.
  7. AdvertisementChangeScanInterval used for identifying status of systems with system defense settings on advertisements – by default runs every 5 minutes – not needed if no systems are managed by SMS Site (such as Central SMS Site) or that don’t run system defense on advertisement.

Tal

1 Comments Permalink Tags: tweak, wmi, sms_addon, sms, sms_add_on, tal_elgar, advertisement, system_defense
Tal Elgar
1

If you are deploying vPro have you thought about what might happen if you are running virtual machines on your vPro clients? The virtual machine will have its own virtual IP address which will be different from the actual host IP address which is the one we want when using vPro. What was happening was that the vPro machine was getting provisioned with SCS, but then when discovery was attempted with the SMS Addon, the provisioned vPro system could never be discovered and sub sequentially managed because the systems showed up as 'Outside Site Boundaries'. It seems that the SMS Addon had a 'flaw' in that it assumed that a machine will only have a single IP address. I cannot say based on my experience whether sometimes the host IP address will be picked up and the problem won't manifest itself or whether it will always be the virtual IP address that will be picked up.

 

I emphasize that I have experienced this situation when using the SMS Addon and not with any other management consoles. That doesn't mean the problem won't manifest with them as well or whether the design of those products caters for this. If anyone has come across virtual machines on vPro clients and this has or has not caused issues I would be interested in your feedback.

 

At a high level, the nature of the fix will be that the SMS Addon will not assume there is a single IP address and will loop through the IP addresses. If an IP address comes up as outside the site boundaries the sms addon will loop onto the next available IP address. This process will continue until it has exhausted all the IP addresses available on that local vPro machine and only at that point 'give up'.

 

The fix within the SMS Addon will be incorporated into an official hotfix which will be published soon; I'll provide an update once it has been released.

1 Comments Permalink Tags: sms_addon, virtual_machine, site_boundaries, sms_site_boundaries, discovery, amt_addon, ip_address, outside_site_boundaries, sms, tal_elgar

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