Lifecycle of IT equipment starts with the plan of acquiring the hardware and extends to its disposal. Cradle to grave they call it but the problem is protecting your dearly departed. There are now so many issues to consider from removing data to the environmental impact of the disposal of the hazardous electronic waste.

Hamline University, in St. Paul, Minnesota, thought they had properly disposed of their old computer equipment but in 2006 monitors started bobbing to the surface of a nearby lake. In total, 64 computer units were found in a sunken boat at the bottom of lake. Officials with the university said they thought they had disposed of it properly by turning the equipment over to a recycling contractor in the early 1990s. "The first we heard of them was when the PCA [Pollution Control Agency] said they found them on the bottom of the lake," said Dan Loritz, Hamline's vice president for university relations. "That was a surprise to us." Even more surprising is that "Authorities said they are relatively certain the dumping took place in spring 2006, at least a dozen years after Hamline got rid of the equipment." ₁

"Until electronic equipment has been properly recycled or disposed of, a donating business is still responsible for that piece of equipment," said Lisa Freeman, toxic use and waste reduction technical assistant with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (Portland), who also stated the agency may levy a fine against the company.₂

"HP, IBM and Kmart were among the brand names on the tags and labels fastened to the scrapped electronics products videotaped by the investigators. Former owners identified on the tags included San Francisco State University, the Los Angeles Unified School District and Xerox Corp. A 16-inch Sony color monitor previously owned by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency found its way to Guiyu." ₃

It is estimated that as many as 150 million obsolete PCs are being stored by businesses. That equipment is not only taking up space, but also losing value every day it sits idle. 4 "With an ever-increasing demand for new electronic gadgets, Americans are storing or discarding millions of tons of obsolete electronic items. Recent estimates indicate that we recycle less than 10 percent of all our unwanted electronic products, which includes computers, televisions, and cell phones, to name just a few. Thanks to collaborative efforts of public and private organizations, we have tremendous opportunities to reuse and recycle this equipment. What's more, as the demand for new products grows, we have even greater opportunities to influence not only their environmentally sound design, but also to get smart about buying and using products that are better for the environment. It's a fact: The environmentally smart design and purchase of new electronic products combined with the reuse and recycling of old ones, saves energy and uses resources more efficiently." ₅

Documenting Disposal in the CMDB

So we know there are all sorts of reasons we need to worry about equipment disposal. Once you have found a reputable means of disposing of your IT assets, you need to keep documentation of what became of them. If you contract with a disposal company you will want them to provide you with a spreadsheet listing the assets, by serial number along with other details.

To store that data in the CMDB will require extending the Resource Model. There are two approaches to this extension. One is to create a new data class for disposal attributes and add the data class to the various assets that are going to be disposed. Another approach is to create a new resource type with the data class of the disposal attributes.

The first approach of adding a data class to the existing resource types is probably the cleaner approach. In my example below I choose the second approach of a new resource type because the disposal vendor provided one spreadsheet for each lot of equipment and I didn't want to run multiple imports against it.

With its own resource type the data could be imported with each lot and then associated to the assets by serial number. Here's how I did it.

Create the Data Class

There are a number of Juice articles on creating new resource types. Here is a link to one of them: Creating a New Asset Type.

The exact fields are up to you. These were selected because the third-party disposal company provides a spreadsheet with these fields.

Click to view.

Create a New Resource Type

Again, there are good articles available on the Juice for creating new resource types. Here is what I did:

Click to view.

I choose to have the Manufacturer and Serial Number as fields in the Disposal Details data class instead of using the system data classes for them because it was easier to keep all of the details in one file.

Enter Data into the Disposal Information Resource Type

Because the disposal company provided a spreadsheet for each lot of assets disposed, I created a Connector data source and rule to import the data.

Step 1: The data source - Excel Spreadsheet

1. Under Solution Settings in Configuration drill-down to Connectors > Data Sources. You can create the new data source in that directory or create a subfolder for your new definition.
2. Right-click on the folder and select New > OleDB Data Source.
3. Fill in the fields. Use the Load List button to populate the full-down list of worksheets. Here is an example:
   

   Click to view.

4. Once you have saved the definition (click Apply). Then you can use the Display import data... link to view the data without leaving the console.

Step 2: The Import Rule

1. Under Solution Settings in Configuration drill-down to Connectors > Import/Export Rules. You can create the new data source in that directory or create a subfolder for your new definition.
2. Right-click on the folder and select Resources Import Export Rule.
   

   Click to view.

3. Select from the list, the data source you defined in step 1 above.
4. The Resource Type is the new resource type you defined above in "Create a new resource type".
5. The Resource Name is going to the serial number of the resource being disposed.
6. Make sure to match the fields from the spreadsheet (the Source fields on the right) to the columns in your Disposal Details data class. The names of the spreadsheet fields is coming from the top line of the spreadsheet.
   

   Click to view.

7. Once you have all the fields matched up, you can give it a Test Run. Once the test is satisfactory, Run Once.

Reporting (and viewing) the Disposal Information

When you go to the Resources display to view the imported data you get the generic view of custom resource types which is simply the resource type, resource name of the resource, created by and created date. By creating a custom report, you can take advantage of it when viewing resources as well.

1. Reports > folder where folder is where ever you would like to create your disposal reports. I created a folder under Asset Management for my custom reports.
2. Right-click the folder/subfolder and select New > Report
   

   Click to view.

3. Name it and then select the Disposal Information for the Data Type.
4. For the Fields, select the ones that you want to see. Selecting them one at a time will set the order of the column in the report. For example, pick Serial Number, click Add, select Lot Number, click Add, etc. They will be listed in the report builder in alphabetic order but the report will be arranged to the order you picked them.

   Be sure to select ResourceGuid so you can edit the resource by right-clicking on an item in the report.

   

   Click to view.

Using the Report to View the Disposal Information Resource

1. Go to Resource Management and drill-down to the Disposal Information (it will be in the User Defined folder unless you moved it).
2. Click the icon in the upper right corner of the right-pane for report picker.
3. Select the report you just created.
4. Now in the pull-down list, you can select that view of the resource data.

Associate Disposal Information to Assets

Step 1 - Create a custom association Asset's Disposal Information.

1. Under Resource Settings in Configuration drill-down to Resource Associations > User Defined.
2. Right-click on the folder and select New > Editable Association Type
3. File in the screen as follows (I put the Disposal Details on their own tab called "Disposal"):
   

   Click to view.

To automate making the association of the disposal information to the assets, we once again use Connector Solution. This time the data source is going to be the results of a SQL query run against the CMDB data.

Step 2: The data source - SQL Query

1. Under Solution Settings in Configuration drill-down to Connectors > Data Sources. You can create the new data source in that directory or create a subfolder for your new definition.
2. Right-click on the folder and select New > OleDB
3. Name your data source.
4. Select MS SQL Server Database as the Data Source Type
5. If the SQL Server is not the same box as the Notification Server, you will need to put in the appropriate server name and credentials. In my example SQL is on the same server.
6. For the table name select "- SPECIFY IMPORT QUERY -".
7. Enter the following SQL in the Import Query field:

   select re.Name, va.[Status], va.[Serial Number], disp.[Lot Number],
        disp.[Lot Date],va.[_ResourceGuid] [Asset Guid], 
        disp.[_ResourceGuid] [Disp Guid]
   from vAsset va join vResourceEx re on va._ResourceGuid = re.Guid
   join Inv_Disposal_Details disp on disp.[Serial Number] = va.[Serial Number]
   
   

   Note: This assumes you named the new data class "Disposal Details" and the serial number field used to link to the asset is called "Serial Number".

Click to view.

The SQL above can also be used to create a report to show the asset and its disposal details.

Step 3: Import Rule

1. Under Solution Settings in Configuration drill-down to Connectors > Import/Export Rules. You can create the new data source in that directory or create a subfolder for your new definition.
2. Right-click on the folder and select Resources Import Export Rule.
3. Select the SQL Query data source you just created.
4. The Resource Type is Asset so any asset with a serial number can have the disposal information associated to it.
5. Expand the Column Mappings and select Resource Guid for the Lookup Key. In the data source we defined using SQL we named the _ResourceGuid of the asset "Asset Guid" and we use it here to associate the results of the query to the actual asset.
6. Make sure to DESELECT any column matching the system does automatically. We do not want to update values in any of these fields, we only want to add an association.
7. In the associations section we are using the Disposal Information's _ResourceGuid, which we called "Disp Guid" in the SQL, to match the disposal details record.
8. Apply, run a test and then run the rule once to actually create the associations.

Click to view.

Report Disposed Assets with details

An easy way to create the report is to clone an existing one.

1. Go to Reports > Asset Management > Asset Type > Assets by Type, Status and Location
2. Right-click and select Clone
3. Name the report whatever you would like. I named my Disposed Assets by Type and Location.
4. Edit your new report.
5. Edit the query and add the following line right BEFORE the line "where (1=1)"

   join Inv_Disposal_Details DD on DD.[Serial Number] = va.[Serial Number]
   
   

6. In the select statement you can add any of the fields from the Disposal Details data class such as Lot Number or Lot date. For example (don't forget the commas):

   vri.[Name] [Name], dd.[Lot Number], dd.[Lot Date],
   
   

7. Save the report. When you run it, only assets that have Disposal Information will be displayed regardless of what you set the Status runtime parameter to.

Changing the Status of the Asset

With the CMDB Solution the product ships with two statuses that can be used; Disposed or Retired. Both of these statuses will free up license use in the Altiris solutions environment. We can use a Notification Policy to set the status of the asset's that have been disposed. We need a report very similar to the one we just wrote with one exception. We don't want to update the status of a disposed asset that is already set to Disposed.

1. Clone the report you created above that lists only assets with associated disposal data. Name it 'Disposed Assets Where Status is Not Equal Disposed'
2. Edit your new report.
3. Edit the query and REPLACE the following line

   and ((va._AssetStatusGuid = '%Status%') or ('%Status%' = cast(0x0 as uniqueidentifier)))
   
   

   WITH this line

   and (NOT (va._AssetStatusGuid = '485c2f89-2faf-46f3-9e98-d80116d1022d') )
   
   

4. ISave the report.
5. Go to Tasks > Asset and Inventory. Create your own folder if you need/want to.
6. Right-click on the folder and select New > Notification Policy.
7. Give it a name and set the Source to Report.
8. Click "Select a report" and from the report picker pop-up screen select the report you created above that lists only assets with associated disposal data whose status is not already 'Disposed'.
9. You may want to change the schedule depending on how often you are going to importing and associating disposal information to assets.
10. In the Add action type list, select Set Asset Status.
11. In the pop-up window, name the action, enable it and select Status = Disposed then click Ok.
12. Enable the policy.
13. Click the Test Notification Policy button to actually run it.
14. Rerunning the report you created in step 1 should confirm that no assets with disposal information currently have status other than Disposed.

Bibliography

1. http://www.agreenspan.org/mainsite/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9&Itemid=40
2. http://www.agreenspan.org/mainsite/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=40
3. http://www.agreenspan.org/mainsite/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32&Itemid=40
4. http://www.assetmgmtnews.com/content/view/557/6/
5. http://www.epa.gov/rcc/resources/electron.htm