Decommissioned DDR Processing in SMS 2003 SP2

SMS 2003 SP2 adds the ability to send notification of client record deletion to the parent site and then propagate that notification up the hierarchy.

Decommissioned discovery data record (DDR) processing is not enabled by default. To enable decommissioned DDR processing, set the DecommissionNotification registry key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\SMS\Components\SMS_Discovery_Data_Manager\DecommissionNotification to a value of 1 on the child site where you want to enable the feature. It is recommended that you enable this on only one site per hierarchy branch to avoid redundant decommissioned DDRs for clients propagating throughout your site hierarchy.

After decommissioned DDR processing is enabled, a child primary site will create and send a special decommissioned DDR to the parent site, notifying the parent site of the client record deletion. The decommissioned DDR adds a new decommissioned attribute to the existing client record at the parent site and sets its value to 1. The client’s decommissioned attribute value is then propagated up the hierarchy.

This feature does not delete items from the parent site, but by querying for the attribute, you can report on decommissioned systems.

After a client record has been decommissioned, it can be reset only by receiving a DDR that has Client = 1 from any discovery methods that have been enabled.