Sometimes, when a distribution point has been decommissioned or renamed, the previous server's site last known component statuses are still reported in the SCCM's Site Status panel. In most cases, we see the exact duplicated site components, thus the Component Status panel is showing 2 server names, and littered with twice the number of components. Obviously, we want to get rid of the redundant ones to get a nice and accurate overview of the site. There are a few ways to go about this and I will share here on the blog my preferred method. This method will also work for you if you see just one or two duplicated components.

Example of components can range anything from the SMS_DESPOOLER to the SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER. Identify the components that are pointing to the decommissioned site system and ensure that the last status messages and heartbeats are from the past and not current. The best way is to just sort by the Site System name which gives you then an immediate overview. It also important to note that the new site system is functioning and that these ghost site component statuses have just somehow bizarrely failed to get rid of themselves after the migration/rename/decommission. To summarise it simply, the information is stored on 2 separate tables in SQL, the 'Summarizer_Components' and the 'Summarizer_ComponentTallys'.  You do not have to guess what is going to happen next then!

*Important!  -Please BACKUP your SCCM Database. It makes good practice and sense to do so every time you want to conduct a clean up or deletion. It's the feeling of having the GET OUT OF JAIL CARD while being instructed to go to jail playing Monopoly. So please exercise caution while performing the following steps.

  • Open up a new instance of an SQL Query for your SCCM Site in SQL. You may also want to take a look at the 2 tables involved, dbo.Summarizer_Components and dbo.Summarizer_ComponentTallys to get a good feel and idea of the data stored in there and what it means.
  • Obtain the machinename and sitecode of the decommissioned site system. In this example I will use ABC2000 as the DECOMISSIONED machine name and ABC as the site. The site is not necessary in fact but I use it as a kind of insurance to ensure that we are really looking at the correct entry. It's always good to be surer, then to be less. Execute the following TSQL against the Summarizer_Components table to determine that the ghost site is present and assigned to the corresponding site. Watch for the ComponentdataID. You will start to realise now after seeing this data what is really happening and how all this fits together.

SELECT sitecode, machinename, componentname, COMPONENTDATAID
FROM summarizer_components where machinename = 'ABC2000' AND sitecode = 'ABC'
ORDER BY ComponentdataID

  • Check now that the entries of ComponentdataID are also relating to and appearing in the Summarizer_Componenttallys table. Examples of values of ComponentdataID are from my experience 5 digit numerals. Let us assume you get back these 6 ComponentdataID values, 11112 to 11117. If there are too many values, you might want to use Excel's Concatenate Function to make life a little easier for you, and then paste that into the TSQL statement.

SELECT * FROM summarizer_componenttallys
WHERE ComponentdataID in
('11112','11113','11114','11115','11116','11117')


Now, the deletions and it is important that this must be done in the correct order shown below.

  • First, delete the entries from the Summarizer_Componenttallys table where the ComponentdataIDs return 11112 to 11117.

DELETE FROM summarizer_componenttallys
WHERE ComponentdataID in
('11112','11113','11114','11115','11116','11117') 

  • Next, delete from the Summarizer_components the respective machinename. Remember to reference the sitecode as well.

DELETE FROM summarizer_components
WHERE machinename = 'ABC2000' AND sitecode = 'ABC'

Restart the SMS_Executive Service, and refresh the site status panel and you should see that those ghost entries have now been vanquished. I hope you see the same, else I would advise you to restore that backup and then do a bit more investigations into the source of the problem. Please also monitor for a while to ensure that these deleted components do not return as well, as it could then be that the sites are still replicating it up to the parent and central site. I hope the above helps you! If not, my apologies and maybe it's time to take a holiday! :)