Recommendations for avoiding invalid components

System maintenance and upgrades can change components on your servers, creating invalid components that were previously valid for a specific component template. When a Snapshot Job runs against an invalid component, it produces errors for the invalid components. These are not actionable errors and are misleading in your compliance results. To avoid that scenario, you should use one of the following recommended options:

Option 1

Always run a Discover Job immediately before the Snapshot Job, to eliminate invalid components from the discovered components list. This paper describes how to combine Discover and Snapshot jobs into a single Batch Job to enforce that policy. Here is an outline of this process:

1. Create a server smart group that includes all of the servers that require FIM.
2. Create a Discover Job for each FIM template, targeting the server smart group.
3. Create a Snapshot Job for each FIM template, targeting the results of the corresponding Discover Job.
4. Combine the sets of Discover and Snapshot Jobs into Batch Jobs. Execute the Batch Jobs on a regular basis.

Option 2

Define component smart groups that test for the specific conditions expected by each template. Then define Snapshot Jobs that use the component smart groups as targets. Because smart groups are updated dynamically, a component smart group ensures that all components are valid for the Snapshot Job that uses it, without requiring constant Discovery Job runs. This method is not discussed further in this paper. Here is an outline of the process:

1. Create a server smart group that includes all of the servers that require FIM.
2. Create a Discover Job that includes all of the FIM templates, targeting the server smart group.
3. Create component smart groups, one for each FIM template, including only those components whose property IS_VALID* is true.
4. Create a Snapshot Job for each FIM template, using the corresponding component smart group as the target. Execute the Snapshot Jobs on a regular basis.