74.9 Understanding the Inventory Sync Service

The Inventory Sync Service is a service loaded by the Inventory Service Manager. It runs on all the Inventory servers that have inventoried workstations attached to them and removes the inventory information of the workstations from the attached Inventory database if they have already been deleted from eDirectory.

The Inventory Sync Service schedule is not automatically created after the Workstation Inventory installation. To schedule the Inventory Sync Service:

  1. In ConsoleOne®, right-click the Inventory Service object (Inventory Service_server_name) of the designated Inventory server, click Properties.

  2. Click the Inventory Service Object tab, select the Inventory Service Sync Schedule suboption.

  3. Modify the settings for scheduling the Inventory Sync Service.

  4. Click Apply, then click Close.

The Inventory Sync Scheduler reads the Inventory Service Sync Schedule and triggers the Inventory Sync service at the specified time. The Inventory Sync service, is started by the Inventory Service Manager, but is activated by the Inventory Service Sync Scheduler.

The processing done by the Inventory Sync service is as follows:

  1. The Inventory Sync Service maintains a list of DN of all the inventoried workstations attached to that Inventory server. The Inventory Sync Service reads the list and validates whether each inventoried workstation is registered in eDirectory.

  2. If the inventoried workstation is not present in eDirectory, the Inventory Sync Service creates a delete str file for that inventoried workstation in the scandir directory.

  3. The Selector validates the delete str files and copies the files into the dbdir and entmergedir directories.

  4. The Storer reads the delete str file in the dbdir and deletes the inventoried workstations from the attached Inventory database.

  5. If the inventory deployment rolls up the inventory information across servers, the delete str file is also rolled up to the next level Inventory server.

    The inventoried workstation is removed from the Inventory database at all Inventory server tree hierarchy levels.

NOTE:If you restore a backup of the Inventory database, the database will contain the workstations that you have removed from eDirectory. The Inventory service does not remove these workstations. To remove these workstations, you must use the Inventory Removal Service. For more information, see Section 76.7, Removing Redundant Inventoried Workstations from the Inventory Database.