ConfigMgr SCCM How to Resolve Duplicate or Conflict Record Issue

ConfigMgr SCCM How to Resolve Duplicate or Conflict Record Issue. I have seen a lot of DUPLICATE record-related issues faced by a lot of people in the Forums. William Eriepa has explained the problem as below in the TechNet thread.

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ConfigMgr SCCM How to Resolve Duplicate or Conflict Record Issue

ISSUE (Credits to William Eriepa) – “Hi. I am having an intermittent problem with duplicate records showing up for computers only. The issue seems to be attributed to the different discovery methods that SCCM uses.

I’ve read many different posts on Technet and other sites but have been unable to find a solution. I’ve checked the related discovery logs and haven’t seen any discovery errors or issues that I can discern.

I have a single primary site that uses discovery. My hierarchy is R3. Here are my discovery settings:

AD System Discovery: 2days (5min delta)
AD System Group Discovery: 15minutes (5min delta)
Heartbeat Discovery:8 hours
Network Discovery: Disabled

The basic problem is when I build a new computer sometimes it will do as follows:

1. Computer is built through OSD – Once built SCCM client sends a DDR to the Site Server, and a record is created for it.
2. Up to 15 minutes later, when AD Sys Grp Disc runs, the record is populated with the correct AD Group/OU information, etc.
3. Up to 2 days later, when AD Sys Disc runs, a new record is created for the same computer. This record has for most of the fields, including the SMSGUID. Still, it does have the correct AD Group/OU information (i.e., this record was created directly from AD/DNS but is not associated with the computer record already in SCCM).
4. Further AD Sys Grp Discoveries only update the new record that isn’t linked to the actual client
5. The original record (linked to the actual client) loses the AD Group/OU information it had and is no longer updated by further AD Sys Grp Discoveries. Heartbeat discoveries continue to work as per normal.

This problem is far from consistent. Recently I built eight computers, PC01 – PC08, at the same time, only PC02 experienced this problem. The original record for PC02 was created on 11/03/2011 at 4:53:56pm via the DDR/Heartbeat Discovery. This record was correctly processing AD Sys Grp Discoveries. Then another form for PC02 was created on 12/03/2011 at 12:15:35 am via AD Sys Disc. At this point, the original record lost its AD Group/OU associations and no longer processed AD Sys Grp Disc.

Deleting the “new” record created by AD Sys Disc results in the “original” form getting the correct AD Group/OU information during the next AD Sys Grp Discovery. So I do have a way to treat this problem, but I would like to find out what I can do to stop it happening in the first place.”

Workaround – ConfigMgr SCCM How to Resolve Duplicate or Conflict Record Issue

Due to the discovery data manager mechanism, Duplicate Records runs a query and sorts the results by date. It will update the most recent returned result rather than the active result if more than one result is returned. Any subsequent AD discovery will update the NULL or inactive entry in the database instead of the active entry.

This is Know Issue with Microsoft. A workaround is available to remove the duplicate records. The below-mentioned query will identify duplicate records of clients:

Select R.ResourceID,R.ResourceType,R.Name,R.SMSUniqueIdentifier,R.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,R.Client from SMS_R_System as r full join SMS_R_System as s1 on s1.ResourceId = r.ResourceId full join SMS_R_System as s2 on s2.Name = s1.Name where s1.Name = s2.Name and s1.ResourceId != s2.ResourceId and R.Client = null

Once those duplicates are identified and fetched into the collection, we can delete those records with the following process. All future AD group discoveries will update the correct record in the database.

1. Create a collection for colleting the duplicate system with NULL record. Please use the below query:

Select R.ResourceID,R.ResourceType,R.Name,R.SMSUniqueIdentifier,R.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,R.Client from SMS_R_System as r full join SMS_R_System as s1 on s1.ResourceId = r.ResourceId full join SMS_R_System as s2 on s2.Name = s1.Name where s1.Name = s2.Name and s1.ResourceId != s2.ResourceId and R.Client = null

2. Once the collection is created and records are populated. Right-click and select delete special.
3. This will delete all the systems which are populated in this collection.

Anoop is Microsoft MVP! He is a Solution Architect in enterprise client management with more than 20 years of experience (calculation done in 2021) in IT. He is a blogger, Speaker, and Local User Group HTMD Community leader. His main focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM 2012, Current Branch, and Intune. E writes about ConfigMgr, Windows 11, Windows 10, Azure AD, Microsoft Intune, Windows 365, AVD, etc…