Slow Software Inventory

[jorlando]

I have been struggling with slow software inventories. The client settings are pretty basic, with only one item set to search subfolders (*.exe in Program Files (x86) or Program Files). The inventory time has gone from 20 minutes to 3-8 hours and I really cannot find any reason why. We have about 20,000 workstations and this is impacting the vast majority of them.

 

In the inventoryagent.log there are no errors... just LONG delays between each namespace. On some machines we may see a timeout after 2 hours:

 

CThrottler::Throttle()[{C0ED66AD-8194-49FD-9826-D0DD38AB7DAA}] - soft timeout exceeded. Throttling is now disabled for the current iteration of this task.

 

The other thing I see is a lot of errors in the inventoryprovider.log. First of all a search of books and the web does not provide me with a description of what this log is tracking, so if anyone can explain I am all ears. But there does seem to be a lot of errors here... keep in mind this is happening on thousands of machines:

 

Here is a snippet:

Failed in discovering instance.

Invalid object (Error: 8004100F; Source: WMI) InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

Failed to do HandleGetObjectAsync().

Invalid object (Error: 8004100F; Source: WMI) InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

GetObjectAsync - Error handling request, 8004100f InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

PopulateInstance - Requested instance not found. InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

Failed in discovering instance.

Invalid object (Error: 8004100F; Source: WMI) InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

Failed to do HandleGetObjectAsync().

Invalid object (Error: 8004100F; Source: WMI) InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

GetObjectAsync - Error handling request, 8004100f InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

PopulateInstance - Requested instance not found. InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

Failed in discovering instance.

Invalid object (Error: 8004100F; Source: WMI) InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

Failed to do HandleGetObjectAsync().

Invalid object (Error: 8004100F; Source: WMI) InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

GetObjectAsync - Error handling request, 8004100f InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

PopulateInstance - Requested instance not found. InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

Failed in discovering instance.

Invalid object (Error: 8004100F; Source: WMI) InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

Failed to do HandleGetObjectAsync().

Invalid object (Error: 8004100F; Source: WMI) InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

GetObjectAsync - Error handling request, 8004100f InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

PopulateInstance - Requested instance not found. InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

Failed in discovering instance.

Invalid object (Error: 8004100F; Source: WMI) InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

Failed to do HandleGetObjectAsync().

Invalid object (Error: 8004100F; Source: WMI) InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

GetObjectAsync - Error handling request, 8004100f InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

PopulateInstance - Requested instance not found. InventoryProvider 9/10/2013 1:05:02 AM 25516 (0x63AC)

Anyone have thoughts as to why the Software Inventory is so slow?

Thanks.

[GarthMJ]

In CM12 SW inv can literally take days to complete. The reason for this is that SW inv task is started with the lowest possible CPU priority. This is due to the high overhead within WMI. There is a rumor of an unsupported edit that will change the priority to the highest CPU priority but that will like impact your client PCs.

 

My question to you is why use SW inv at all?

[jorlando]

We actually do have a need for the Software Inventory. Some other applications (3rd Party) we use need to know file information on executable, dll's or if we are looking for something specific (Like outlook add-on's or rarely we need to "tag" a machine with a file). Some encryption software for example we need to look at the file version to determine if its fully patched. So we use some products that are purposely not listed in the Installed Applications (Such as encryption for the disk or email tools)

 

Would you call the errors in the InventoryProvider.log normal? Do you know the what function InventoryProvider.log is tracking?

[GarthMJ]

To be honest, I have never looked at the InventoryProvider.log, I haven't found a need to..

 

After a quick review of my InventoryProvider.log, it too has a number of errors, so I would suggest that they are normal.

[jorlando]

Thanks for all the information!

[smokin5s]

I'm experiencing the same issue... did you ever get a resolution for this?

[GarthMJ]

Why do you want to use SW inv anyways? I almost never recommend using it.

 

BTW I did up a blog on why SW is sooo slow in CM12. For whatever reason I can't paste urls, so check out the http://be.enhansoft.com site and search for software inventory to see how slow it is.

[Peter van der Woude]

I use firefox only for this forum, so I can paste URLs here

 

This is the link Garth is refering to: http://be.enhansoft.com/post/2013/10/03/Slow-Software-Inventory-Cycle-in-SCCM-2012.aspx

[jorlando]

Here is what I ended up doing: http://myitforum.com/myitforumwp/2013/11/06/local-policy-override-to-disable-inventory-throttling/

 

Works as advertised and it was easy.