Deleting computers from management

[jbarnes]

We have a lot of computers we'd like to remove from management, some of which are out of contact -- others not. We'd like to cause as little disturbance for these machines wherever they are as possible.

This is probably a rather dumb question:

If computers are removed/deleted from the JSS, can it be assumed they will not at any point throw out errors to their users that they have lost communication with the JSS?

And I am guessing they do not register their removal and continue to poll for the server until they die or are reformatted?

Does that sound about right? Ideally it would be nice to "jamf removeFramework" them, but many are out of contact anyway, and it seems even safer to just delete them from the JSS and wait until their users dispose of them in time. The computers I am talking about are 4-5 years old by now.

[mm2270]

The LaunchDaemon that triggers the check-in will still fire off on whatever frequency you've set, since that is machine based and not dependent on the JSS, and, assuming the jamf binary is still installed on them, will just report an error in the logs that it either can't locate the JSS, or, if it finds the JSS, can't update anything since a corresponding record isn't there in the JSS.

The user's should not see any visible errors on screen, but they may notice errors in the Console logs if they happen to look in there.

Edit: I meant to add that a better option might be to simply uncheck the management checkbox for the computers that have gone MIA on you. This achieves several things.

1) It removes them from any Smart Groups, since only managed devices can be in a Smart Group,
2) If the Mac does check in, no policies will run on it, that way you won't get a situation where a Mac suddenly resurfaces after a year and a hundred pending policies try to run on it.
3) You can still keep tabs on these Macs by having an Advanced Search for unmanaged Macs and make sure the Last Check In column is displayed. If any start showing up again, I believe they do update the check in date that is listed for them, so you'll see if they are "phoning home" again.

[jbarnes]

Thank you this is very helpful!

[lisamcray]

I know that this is an old post, but it speaks to exactly the issue I am trying to resolve!

The recommendation to "Uncheck the management checkbox" would seem to be the logical solution, but administratively it is WAY more cumbersome than deleting the computers.

I'd love to make a feature request to have "unmanage" added to the Actions options for Smart Computer Groups.