Removing the Redundant Inventoried Servers from the Inventory Database

You can remove the unwanted, redundant, or obsolete inventoried servers from the Inventory database using the Inventory Removal service.

The Inventory Removal service is a manual service that runs on the Inventory server. The service removes the inventoried servers from the Inventory database using the inventoryremovallist.txt file. The inventoryremovallist.txt file contains a list of inventoried servers that must be removed from the Inventory database.

IMPORTANT:   You can run the Inventory Removal service on the Intermediate Server only if the Intermediate Server has either inventoried servers or database attached to it.

To remove the inventoried servers from the Inventory database:

1. Using a text editor, create a file with the name inventoryremovallist.txt with the following contents:

   ;                     Enter comments, if any

   DN of the inventoried server (as stored in the Inventory database) to be removed from the Inventory database 
   DN of the inventoried server (as stored in the Inventory database) to be removed from the Inventory database 
   .... 
   DN of the inventoried server (as stored in the Inventory database) to be removed from the Inventory database

   A sample inventoryremovallist.txt file is as follows:

   CN=INT-SERVER-NDS.OU=Leaf.O=XYZ.T=XYZ-TREEzen-server.xyz.com 
   CN=ROOT-SERVER-NDS.O=XYZ.T=XYZ-TREE

   To generate the list of inventoried servers that must be removed you can either perform a query on a selected criteria or manually enter the names of the inventoried servers. For more information on Query, see Viewing Inventory Information of Inventoried Servers by Querying the Database.

2. Copy the inventoryremovallist.txt file to the ZENworks_installation_path\zenworks\inv\server\wminv\properties directory.

3. In the ZENworks_installation_path\zenworks\inv\server\wminv\properties\
   inventoryremoval.properties file, ensure that the value of FilePath is the location of inventoryremovallist.txt (specified in Step 2).

   NOTE:  Ensure that the path separator is a forward slash ( / ) and not a backslash ( \ ).

4. At the server console prompt, enter StartSer RemoveInventory to start the Inventory Removal service.

The processing done by Inventory Removal service is as follows:

1. The Inventory Removal service reads each line of the inventoryremovallist.txt file and creates a delete str file for each inventoried server that is listed in the inventoryremovallist.txt file.

   The delete str file is saved in the scandir directory if the Selector is running, else it will be placed in the dbdir or entmergedir directories depending on the Inventory server role.

2. The Selector validates the delete str file and copies it into the dbdir and entmergedir directories.

3. The Storer reads the delete str file from dbdir and deletes the inventoried server from the attached Inventory database.

4. If the inventory deployment rolls up inventory information, the delete str is also rolled up to the next level Inventory server.

   The inventoried server is deleted from the Inventory database at all Inventory servers deployed at the enterprise level.