An inventory device may no longer appear in All Inventory for several reasons. Depending on the cause, the device may be removed, moved to Remote Devices, merged with another inventory record, or deleted manually.

Obsolete inventory cleanup

Starting with FNMS 2022 R1, an automated cleanup task can remove stale inventory records collected by the Flexera Agent.

The cleanup task removes inventory records when the device has not reported inventory within the configured obsolete-inventory period. By default, this setting is set to Never.

This setting applies only to devices whose inventory source is the Flexera Agent.

Check the obsolete-inventory setting

1. Go to System Settings > Inventory > Obsolete Inventory.
2. Review the configured obsolete-inventory threshold.

Active Directory synchronization

A beacon can synchronize with Active Directory and import computer, user, and organizational information.

During inventory processing, inventory is matched against the imported Active Directory computer information. If a computer object is deleted or disabled in Active Directory, the associated computer is removed during the next Active Directory import.

If the FlexNet Inventory Agent is the device's only inventory source, the inventory device is also removed.

Check the Active Directory computer object

Check whether the associated computer object has been deleted or disabled in Active Directory.

Non-persistent VDI devices

A VDI clone may initially report inventory through the Flexera Agent and appear in All Inventory. Agent-based inventory alone may not identify the device as a non-persistent VDI.

When Citrix data is imported through a Citrix adapter, non-persistent VDI devices are identified. These devices are removed from All Inventory and shown in Remote Devices.

Check whether the device is shown as a remote device

Review Remote Devices to determine whether the device is listed there.

Terminated cloud instances

For devices running in cloud service providers such as AWS or Azure, a cloud connector can report an instance as terminated.

When an instance is reported as terminated, the associated inventory device may be removed.

Manual deletion

A user can manually delete an inventory device from the All Inventory page.

Deleting an inventory device in the web interface removes the associated computer record from the inventory database. If fresh inventory is later imported, the device can be restored.

Hardware matching and record merging

An inventory device may appear to have been removed when it has been merged with another inventory record.

Flexera uses unique hardware identifiers to match inventory. If a device reports the same hardware identifier as an existing record, the system treats the records as the same inventory device and merges them.

If the records have different hostnames, the older hostname may no longer appear in inventory. This can make it appear that the device was deleted.

This can occur when devices are incorrectly imaged with duplicate hardware identifiers.

Check for a matching device

If searching by device name does not identify duplicate records, try searching by serial number or UUID.

Advanced troubleshooting for on-premises deployments

The following SQL queries can help identify why a device is no longer shown in All Inventory.

Check whether a VDI device is non-persistent

Query the ImportedVDI table to determine whether the device is flagged as non-persistent. A value of 0 for IsPersistent indicates a non-persistent VDI device.

SELECT *
FROM ImportedVDI
WHERE ComputerName = 'device-name';

Check for a terminated cloud instance

Query ImportedComputer and ImportedMissingComputer using the device external ID.

SELECT *
FROM ImportedComputer ic
    LEFT OUTER JOIN ImportedMissingComputer imc
        ON imc.ComplianceConnectionID = ic.ComplianceConnectionID
        AND imc.ExternalID = ic.ExternalID
WHERE ComputerName = 'device-name';

Check for raw inventory and other import sources

Check whether raw inventory exists for the device or whether the device was imported from a different source under a different name.

-- Check for raw inventory
SELECT *
FROM Computer c
LEFT OUTER JOIN InventoryReport ir
    ON ir.ComputerID = c.ComputerID
WHERE c.ComputerCN = 'YourDeviceName';

-- Check all import sources
SELECT *
FROM ImportedComputer
WHERE ComputerName = 'YourDeviceName';

If searching by device name does not identify duplicate records, try searching by serial number or UUID.