A question came up during the MMS 2007 "Ask the Experts" session about Decommissioned DDR Processing (introduced with SMS 2003 SP2). I wasn't a member of the panel, but I did speak a little about it then. Because of the confusion about this subject, I thought I'd create this post to get the word out a little more about the behavior. Rather than reinvent the wheel, and because it's a pretty small part of the original document I wrote for the What's New in SMS 2003 SP2 documentation, I've just C&P'd the relevant text to this blog entry. The official What's new in SMS 2003 SP2 documentation can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sms/sms2003/whatsnewsms2003/f679a216-d357-4139-9343-85837327c865.mspx?mfr=true
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.
This posting is provided "AS IS' with no warranties, and confers no rights.