How to manually remove a decommissioned Domain Controller from Change Auditor? (4372605)

How to manually remove a decommissioned Domain Controller from Change Auditor?

Manually decommissioned a Domain Controller and still shows in the Deployment tab or Agent Statistics page in the Change Auditor client console.

When servers are decommissioned, it is common for them to be taken offline without being properly unjoined from the domain and without uninstalling the agent from the CA console's deployment section.

In some instances, decommissioned servers may still appear in the system. To address this, it is recommended to disable all coordinator services if multiple coordinators are in use. Next, start one coordinator and allow it to run for 72 hours to ensure a complete re-scan of the entire forest, encompassing all domains and synchronizing global catalog entries. This process is particularly crucial for environments with extensive infrastructure, as re-scanning can be time-consuming, especially for clients with over 700 Domain Controllers (DCs).

However, even after these steps, residual computer objects may persist if they have not been deleted from Active Directory (AD). This persistence can occur due to remnants in AD records, such as DNS pointer records or ADSi entries.

To streamline this process and avoid residual issues, it is advisable to set the agent status to 'Uninstalled' from the CA Windows client. This can be done by navigating to View > Statistics > Agent page and marking the agent as 'Uninstalled.' This action instructs Quest software to disregard the object. While the object may still appear in the list due to old events in the database, you can later purge this data to completely remove it from the application.