Quick removal of Clients based on serial number

1

(imported topic written by YMC)

Recently my company replaced hundreds of computers. I have a text file with list of old clients machine serial numbers.

I am unable to remove the clients based on hostname is because the replaced machines used back the same hostname.

I am aware that BESComputerRemover tool is able to accept text file with list of computer name. Is there a quick way to remove the clients basing on serial number?

2

(imported comment written by jgstew)

I believe it is possible to remove the computers with the same name and remove whichever one has the oldest “last report” time.

I’m fairly certain we have a scheduled job which automatically removes computers with the same name, always removing the older one.

3

(imported comment written by YMC)

I want to remove a list of clients based on
Serial Number
not computer name. Thanks.

I cannot remove base on computer name due to some reason for tracking asset changes.

4

(imported comment written by jgstew)

Sorry I misunderstood what you were getting at.

You are saying that you have machines that have been replaced, so the computer name is the same, but the serial numbers are different, but you DO NOT want to delete these records.

You DO want to delete computers which have the same hardware serial number, but may or may not have the same computer name. Is this correct?

Or, do you only want to delete computers from the console if they have BOTH the same serial number and computer name?

There are built in analyses that retrieve the serial number of the hardware, but I have also made one that works on both Windows & *nix systems that is worth looking at here:

http://bigfix.me/analysis/details/2994601

You are then going to need session relevance to detect when the correct conditions are met to return the computer IDs that have the identical serial numbers. You then may need to do some further analysis between the duplicates to figure out which one to delete, but generally the older one has a lower computer ID, while the newer one has a higher computer ID. Last report time is also useful to look at.

I’m not the best when it comes to session relevance, and you may have better luck finding an answer in the Web Reports forum, since that deals primarily with session relevance, though this post may contain the answer you are looking for:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/forums/html/topic?id=827de23e-a0b0-462c-95ff-cec7e5c3137c

Also, this may help as well:
http://bigfix.me/relevance/details/2998823

5

(imported comment written by YMC)

Thanks for inputs.

I have decided to use manual “eye power” to delete the clients from console instead.