1

I’m having the same issue as discussed in Devices Being Overwritten . Seems the experts stopped responding to that one and hoping a new topic may get it going again. Any recommendations on how to resolve this?

@spiceworks-support-team

2 Spice ups
2

This is most likely a stale DNS issue, specifically rDNS and nothing specific to the app itself.

FYI Jaime no longer works for SW.

3

We have scavenging enabled to cleanup old records, but it’s possible for systems using DHCP to reuse IP addresses. We are not currently using reverse lookup zones for user systems, are you saying the spiceworks depends on these for it’s inventory? As others have mentioned it seems the system should check for something more unique such as a the service tag/serial number for system identification before overwriting a record.
Looks like Jon, not Jaime, was the last expert responding to the post.

4

Think about your question, and what you fill in to be scanned - what do you scan - a range of IPs, in order for it to know the machine name it must do a reverse lookup, rDNS is therefore required, not just for SW be in general, why would you not be using it? I’m surprised you don’t have other general network problems.

It’s created by default when you setup AD, new zones can be added or the existing expanded to accommodate, many systems heavily rely on DNS.

SW does compare device serial number and MAC address before determining a duplicate or overwriting, but if DNS says a device is called A and you know it to be 123, then it’s a DNS problem, your other device may have been matched elsewhere so to avoid duplication, SW will revert to what DNS says as Mac address or serial number 123456 is already present for another IP in the DB.

I would also note that Jaime and Jon were staff - this doesn’t always make them an expert because they work there - I’ve used the system more in-depth and longer than most staff there today, hence why I have almost 2000 best answers in this category. Jaime used to leave me to it and you’ll find many of my posts throughout, covering DNS and why things happen or don’t in the SW app.

FYI based on Jon’s profile, he also no longer works for SW.

5

It’s using the serial number for system identification. But be aware that inventory isn’t always able to catch the serial number.

I’m unable to reply in the topic you referenced.

So here, I had a first good impression on Spiceworks inventory and scanning. But this has changes as I detected it didn’t catch updates or system reboots later regardless how often I request a rescan. What I didn’t try is the Spiceworks agent. I’m running Spiceworks inventory in agentless mode. Spiceworks agent may improve the situation. Did you already try it? If yes, with which results?

6

Spiceworks uses WMI to obtain information from the devices, and healthy reverse DNS is really important for remote WMI calls to work properly.

Make sure scavenging is also configured correctly for the lease times you’re using. Enabling scavenging and leaving its defaults while maybe also having shorter leases for wireless clients can create a mess, too.

7

I updated the settings and reverse DNS is now being generated. Our DHCP lease times are set for 1 day and were configured to update DNS automatically. DNS scavenging while enabled was configured for 14 days for A records and 7 days on PTR, I’ve set all this for 1 day now to match the DHCP leases. Hopefully this resolves the issue of records being overwritten.

Thank you.

1 Spice up