Are Duplicate GUIDs And Conflicting Records The Same Thing?
The short answer is no. There are two kinds of possible duplicate computer records in SCCM. The first one is machines with the same hardware ID. The hardware ID is unique to each computer and it is based on its hardware properties. CPU type, MAC address, memory, etc. are some of the properties used to determine the machine hardware ID. We could get conflicting records in SCCM when the OS is reinstalled on a computer. The client will get a new GUID from SCCM, but its hardware ID will remain the same. In this scenario we end up with two records in the database for the same computer. SCCM 2007 can detect and correct conflicting records automatically, or the administrator can choose to do it manually.
The second type of duplication is duplicate GUIDs. These are machines with different hardware IDs that share the same SMS Identifier or GUID. A common scenario that causes duplicate GUIDs is hard disk duplication or cloning. The auto correct conflicting records feature in SCCM will not detect or fix duplicate GUIDs. The best way to identify and fix duplicate GUIDs is by using the Managing Duplicate Globally Unique Identifiers in Systems Management Server 2003 white paper. Using the three queries documented in the white paper to create a collection and then target the collection with TranGUID, is a very easy procedure to fix clients with duplicate GUIDs. SCCM administrators should avoid duplicate GUIDs since among other things, they could affect the server performance when processing discovery and inventory data.
To summarize we could have:
1. Conflicting records – Records with the same machine ID
2. Duplicate GUIDs – Records with the same SMS Identifier or GUID
