Viewing Hardware Inventory

  • Article

You can find the hardware inventory information collected for a client within the Hardware folder in Resource Explorer. The Hardware History folder contains inventory data that has changed since the previous inventory cycle. These histories remain until you delete the information manually or by using a database maintenance task, such as the Delete Aged Inventory History or Delete Aged Discovery Data tasks.

The Hardware folder contains a wealth of information ranging from specifics about the manufacturer and type of hardware internals to the free space available on each disk. You can use this information to determine which computers to distribute software to, for example, or when to perform remote troubleshooting.

Note

  • There might be some delay between the collection of hardware inventory data and its appearance in Resource Explorer, depending on where the client is in relation to the SMS site server that Resource Explorer is using, and network or SMS Sender delays.

To view an SMS client's hardware inventory with Resource Explorer, navigate to a collection containing the client in the SMS Administrator console.

Where?

Systems Management Server > Site Database (site code - site name) >Collections > collection containing client

In the details pane, right-click the client whose information you want to view, point to All Tasks, and then click Start Resource Explorer. A new window for Resource Explorer opens and displays information about the selected client. Hardware inventory data is under the Hardware node.

You can also open Resource Explorer from queries in the SMS Administrator console. The properties returned by the queries must include the resource identifier and resource type. In the details pane, right-click the client whose information you want to view, point to All Tasks, and then click Start Resource Explorer. A new window for Resource Explorer opens and displays information about the selected client.

SMS keeps historical hardware inventory records for the number of days you specify in the Delete Aged Inventory History site maintenance task. For a complete description of this and other database maintenance tasks, see Chapter 13, "Maintaining and Monitoring SMS Systems."

Note

  • If you double-click a row in the results pane of the Resource Explorer, a properties dialog box is displayed. This dialog box gives a vertical list of the properties and values for that row. This view might be easier to read than the horizontal list in the results pane.
For More Information

Did you find this information useful? Please send your suggestions and comments about the documentation to smsdocs@microsoft.com.