This issue won't impact many of you, and to induce the following behaviour you really need to go toggle some values most SMS Admins leave well alone. Hence why this one hasn't been spotted in the wild (there is a technet forum thread on this ...).

Have you noticed in your environment that your Component Status Summarization data is not being replicated to the parent site?

You prod it with the proverbial stick but it just won't respond, akin to a dead duck?

Well, firstly each Site server will summarizer it's own status messages for Offer, Component and Site System, wrap this up in a SUM file then replicate to it's Parent Site server (obviously only if this feature is enabled!). This is so that the Parent does not have to summarizer nn amount of child sites status messages. Overwhelm the server it could, so instead this summarization is performed by the owner of the status messages. I do believe this hasn't changed since the SMS 2.0 days, and is an effective way of managing the problem of summarization and replication of this data upwards.

You can check the usual log files, ending up in COMPSUMM, and you notice that nothing is ever put in to a SUM file for replication to the Parent Site server.

Again I have to say *** 99.9% of you WON'T ever experience this problem ***

That 0.1% that do suffer from the problem probably have done two things:

  1. Firstly, they have modified the Replication Priority for the Component Status Summarizer from MEDIUM to HIGH or LOW at the Child site.
  2. Secondly, they have reverted the change back to MEDIUM at the Child site.

If you are suffering from this problem, then go check your COMPSUMM log, make sure it definately isn't attempting to put together the SUM file for replicatioh, and that you are set to Replication Priority Medium. If so, now go check your SCF and pull up next to the <SMS_COMPONENT_STATUS_SUMMARIZER> Component definition, check out the Replication tag. Usually looks like this:

<Replication><Enabled><Normal><0>

If it says Medium instead of Normal then there is the problem. ConfigMgr is looking for three values, High, Normal and Low. Therefore Medium is ignored, the replication of summarization data is skipped, and you don't see summarization data at the Parent. The child site will continue to summarize, but it just won't get around to producing and replicating a SUM file to the Parent Site server.

I reproduced this in my home test lab and can confirm all of the above.

Three ways out of this:

  1. Change to HIGH\LOW (LOW best option, only if you are impacted, leave the Component Status Summarizer alone if you are not experiencing the problem)
  2. Keep at MEDIUM but edit the SCF (I totally recommend that you DO NOT do this)
  3. Wait for the impending hot-fix from Microsoft or for it to be rolled in to the next product service pack (Best path if you are unaffected)

By default, the out of the box SCF file has the correct definition so this bug activates ONLY if you modify Replication Priority for this specific component. Please do not tinker on your production environment to reproduce this problem, do it in the lab if you are unaffected but interested.

Force be with you and all that Wink