Usage guide: Configuration Manager (SCCM) client health

Introduction

This library pack will help you monitor Configuration Manager (SCCM) client presence, compliance, and stability across your entire devices to quickly diagnose and remediate client issues. This page will guide you through the structure of the content and how it can be used.

Please keep in mind this is a guide and represents just some of the potential insight and actions you can take. There are many use cases and specific troubleshooting scenarios that you might uncover in your environment.

Ensure your library pack is properly configured by following the steps highlighted in its configuration guide:

Configuration guide: Configuration Manager (SCCM) client health

Pack structure

Overview of the Configuration Manager client environment.

The "Configuration Manager (SCCM) client health" live dashboard acts as the central point of this library pack. Using this dashboard, you can detect and resolve the most common issues related to Configuration Manager (SCCM) clients: devices without a client or with an incompatible version; health and stability of clients on devices; Windows updates compliance data ; client performance and client network connection details.

Advanced troubleshooting and remediation

For more in-depth investigations, you can rely on the results of specific data-gathering remote actions.

Get Configuration Manager SCCM client status: This remote action gathers information about different aspects of the Configuration Manager (SCCM) client, like the client connection to a site, the last update or deployment performed, and others.
Get Configuration Manager SCCM client health: This remote action gathers information about different aspects of the Configuration Manager (SCCM) client: from the client connection to a site to the last update or deployment performed.

Note

Some of these data-gathering remote actions are used to populate the live dashboard and should already be scheduled. You can query the results by investigating KPIs from the Live dashboard or from your own investigations.

To resolve some of the detected issues, the following remote actions can be triggered when required:

System Cleanup: This remote action remotely cleans up unused files in several Windows system folders.
Restore Configuration Manager SCCM client: This remote action restores Configuration Manager-related Windows services (SMS Agent, BITS, WMI, RPC, Windows Time) and retrieves information about Configuration Manager (SCCM) clients on devices.
Install Configuration Manager SCCM client: This remote action installs the Configuration Manager client on devices.
Uninstall Configuration Manager SCCM client: This remote action uninstalls the Configuration Manager client from devices.

Use cases

Identify areas of improvement

The summary tab provides a quick overview of the health of Configuration Manager clients in your organization. Based on this information, you can navigate to the appropriate tab for more detailed troubleshooting.

Filters above the dashboard help you focus on a specific area, device, or platform type. The time picker can also be used to view data on a more granular or long-term time scale.

Monitor Configuration Manager client adoption

The Adoption tab of the dashboard displays detailed information about the Configuration Manager client presence in your environment.

Using the widgets on this tab along with the Drill Down, Investigate features, you can identify devices that are missing the client or have an untargeted version installed, and take corrective action to ensure that Configuration Manager manages all devices in the management area.

Examples of corrective actions:

Using the Drill down to devices feature, you can get a list of devices without a client.
With this list, you can use one of the following options:
- Review your Configuration Manager policy that deploys clients to endpoints and ensure that those devices are within the scope of the policy;
- Trigger the Install Configuration Manager (SCCM) client remote action.

Make sure the client is working properly on devices

The Health and Stability tab provides detailed information about the various health and stability points of Configuration Manager clients on different devices.
Widgets on this tab indicate issues with client dependencies, client functionality, and client instability.
Using the widget on this tab, filters, and drill down to device feature, the dashboard operator can identify devices with faulty agents and take corrective actions, for example:

Using the Drill down to devices feature, you can get a list of devices with a faulty or unstable client.
You can use this list to trigger the Restore Configuration Manager (SCCM) client remote action on affected devices. This remote action restores the client dependencies and client service to a working state.

Monitor Windows update compliance on devices running the client

The Compliance tab provides key information about deploying operating system updates to managed devices. This tab contains a set of widgets that indicate devices that have not installed Windows updates in the last month, or devices that indicate missing updates. Lack of updates may mean that the client does not function properly on these devices, and compliance on these devices cannot be guaranteed. In addition to non-compliance issues, this can lead to security breaches that put your environment at risk.

The widgets on this tab help the operator understand why devices are not updating: the Configuration Manager client is missing or not working, Configuration Manager is not configured correctly, or for other reasons. The operator can then take appropriate corrective action to fix the issue.

Examples of corrective actions:

Check trend lines of devices with missing and delayed updates. Find out if the trend is increasing and if there are boom/bust cycles.
The presence of boom/bust cycles may indicate that the Configuration Manager policy is setting the update deployment interval to be longer.
An increasing trend may indicate that missing or delayed updates are due to recent policy changes or communication problems between clients and Configuration Manager site systems.
To further investigate these issues, you can use the drill-down to device feature in the KPI widgets, which indicates the number of devices affected. This feature will return you a list of affected devices.
Using this list you can check which policy is applied by the Configuration Manager and its configuration.
To check connectivity between clients and Configuration Manager site systems, you can check the statuses of your Configuration Manager site systems and use the Network Connectivity tab in this dashboard to filter by device name, entity, or location and check for connectivity issues.

Monitoring client resource usage

The Performance tab provides various breakdowns of the average percentage of CPU usage and average memory usage of the Configuration Manager client on devices, which helps to find and fix devices where the client is consuming excessive resources and could be impacting the end-user experience.

By using filters by device name, operating system name and version, and client version breakdown, you can identify client versions that are consuming excessive amounts of resources and take corrective action.

Examples of corrective actions:

Using the Drill down to devices feature, you can get a list of devices without a client.
With this list, you can use one of the following options:
- Review the Configuration Manager policy that updates clients on endpoints and ensure that clients are updated regularly.
- Trigger the Install Configuration Manager (SCCM) client remote action configured to install the target version of the client.

Monitor Configuration Manager client network connection data

The Network connectivity tab displays the status of network activity on devices running the Configuration Manager client.

This tab is designed to detect client connection issues and monitor client traffic usage.
Using the widgets on this tab, as well as filters by site, location, and device name, you can identify clients with connectivity issues and determine whether the problem affects individual devices, specific versions of the client, or is a site-wide issue affecting all endpoints.
The Network connection status of Configuration Manager client section of this tab is designed to identify trends in traffic usage by clients and the domains that clients communicate with. Abnormally low traffic usage may indicate connectivity issues or misconfiguration of Configuration Manager site systems when a group of devices fall outside of defined Configuration Manager boundaries.