SIM adds multiple servers/IP's under single entry

[COOPERCAV]

When deploying new BL20p servers using Altiris RDP, SIM is listing a single server, but the IP addresses of all the other servers are listed against this. If you manually add one of the missing servers, the origonal entry is removed from SIM and the new entry then has all the servers IP addresses instead. How is this so & what is SIM using to determine that they are the same machine when they are definately not.

[Ed2]

Howdy,
Last question first...
SIM uses a hexidecimal representation of the serial number that the Foundation Agent pulls out of the SMBIOS. It takes this and puts it into the registry under a key called "HostGuid". This GUID or Global Unique IDentifier is supposed to be unique per server much like a Social Security number.
I don't know for sure about your imaging method under RDP, but the imaging jobs for Proliants have a utility that runs just prior to an image capture called HPPrep.exe. This utility strips out the GUID prior to the image capture process. This way you are not duplicating the GUID to other machines when you lay this image back down. One way to tell if you have a duplicate GUID problem is to look at the registry for a couple of these problem servers and see if the numbers that correspond to the GUID are the same (see the registry key above). If you do have this duplication problem, simply delete the key and restart the Foundation Agent. This will create a new GUID on the server. I would then go back and delete all servers under SIM (except I don't think you can delete the SIM server itself) and do another discovery.
Good luck,
Ed Cox

[COOPERCAV]

You the man!!!
I was sure the image was cpqprep'd, but maybe it went wrong somehow. It's now working which is the main thing, but do you know if anything else is likely to be effected if this did fail to run? Will it just be restricted to Compaq/HP agent issues or could there be other issues at OS level.
Cheers and thanks again.

[Ed Cox]

Helloooooo,
This GUID is strictly an HP thing...
So if it's not stripped out the only thing affected will be the SIM discovery process. This happens a lot when someone uses Ghost to do imaging since the Ghost process is not aware of the HP GUID.
The Altiris Aclient will use either SIDgen or Sysprep depending on how you setup the Aclient agent, to prepare the OS portion prior to the image capture. If the Aclient is set to use SIDgen, then prior to rebooting to DOS for the image capture it will strip out the SID, Server name, IP address and shut down networking. It will then force the server to bypass the OS on the next reboot so that it can boot to the PXE nic.
Once the image capture is uploaded by rdeploy.exe to the RDP server, the system boots back to the OS where the Aclient will put the server's "personality" back into the OS. This is usually followed by one more reboot for the insertion changes to take effect.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
But it's probably pints at the pub time over there by now...
Ed

[COOPERCAV]

Excellent. I think I'll just recapture the image and pay special attention to cpqprep running this time.
Thanks one and all, oh, and it was pints in the garden in the summer sun!