How does MDM Device Inventory work? | Problem: slow device after policy update
Hello,
i noticed something problematic in our MDM Installation.
Whats happening:
You startup a PDA, everything is going fine, VPN connects, ActiveSync Synchronizes, all fine.
Now you wait for some time ( maybe 8 hours ) or one just start "MDM Connect Now" -> "Connect Now".
After this manual or automatic policy update we notice the following behaviour on all our Handheld devices.
If you switch of the display (with a short tip at on/off) wait 5 minutes and switch it on again.
The device starts to hang at the logon screen.
You can see the pin mask, sometimes you can even type numbers but always it takes about 1 - 2 minutes to click "unlock".
After this you get to "today" the time is outdated (showing the time when you switch off the display) it takes another minute for everything to "settle".
So after 3 minutes the device is suddenly usable, you can open your calendar, the time is correct and so on.What i found out:
So much for our problem, now to the interesting part.
The following was noted by accident.
If i disable the ability to reach the DeviceMgmt Server (due to a misleading host setting for example, or proxy config, or .. ).
Everything is working really fast and without any problem (except for policy updates, which is quite logical).
So what is my problem?
My Problem is that i don't understand what Management feature is slowing down all our devices.
We even got problems on accepting phone calls as the phone UI takes to long to show up.
I tried to track down this issue using jshell ( provided by the MS support ) and taskmanager, both showed nothing out of the ordinary.
All log files are clean, the only thing i noticed was a conflicting GPO setting ( 2 GPO saying opposite things ) which i corrected.
The problem occours on all Windows Mobile 6.1.x releases on nearly 100 devices distributed around 4 device generations ( HTC Diamond, HTC Diamond II, HTC Diamond HD, HTC Diamond Pro, ..).
--- About MDM Inventory ---
As i checked the entire configuration i haven't found any obvious error so i started looking for things which could cause this slow down.
One thing i am quite unsure about is the influence of the "MDM Inventory" does have on the device.
I looked up the Technet but haven't found an answer on how often (interval) and how much data is collected by the inventory.
There is only a way to disable and enable it globally and see the fetched data.
Is it problematic to disable it globally?
Could it cause this Slow down?
How often is the inventory renewed?
I would be really glad if someone even could me with just one of my above asked questions :-)
As i am quite familiar with MDM and all topics related to it you can give me any technical details or food for thoughts.
with best regards,
Robert
All Replies
- Robert, We have exactly the same issue with 300+ devices (HTC Touch HD). We currently have this investigated by Microsoft. Even answering phone calls has been made impossible because of MDM. When not enrolled under MDM everything (answering calls, sendeng/receiving text messages) runs just fine on these devices. When enrolled phone calls are missed because the device does not respond to any buttons. A ROM update provided on the HTC site does not improve the performance. So, no really help right now, but perhaps it makes you feel any better you're not the only one... Kind regards, Hans Noordhuis
- Hello noordhuh,
thanks for your reply.
This really helped me as we have the exact same issue.
I left out the part with answering phone calls, but the behaviour sounds like a perfect match.
We tried a lot of different OS ROM and Radio ROM Updates ranging from OS ROM 6.1.0 to 6.1.4.
We also experimented with different configurations using plain Windows Mobile 6.1.x and the carrier customized version.
There was no change in the behaviour.
The onl,y thing we noticed that the devices seem to be a bit more stable using Windows Mobile 6.1.4 than with 6.1.2.
Please keep me updated on your developments!
Are you using the device encryption?
with best regards,
Robert - Hi Guys, I also have heard of issues with SCMDM 2008 SP1 enrolled devices with a "slow wakeup" problem. In this case with a Samsung Saga and HTC Touch Pro 2, but on the same environment no issue on a Samsung Omnia it appeared. Problem as been escalated to Microsoft and they are hashing it out I believe. Afraid I have no further information at this time..
|\\arco.. - Hey guys, we are also having the issue and are currently working with Microsoft for a resolution. We have had it happen on several WinMo Pro phones, including a few devices that are not even released yet. One thing I have noticed is that the issue does not happen on the HTC Ozone, which is a WinMo standard phone. That is the only device we are able to deploy.
Our wake-up issue is not the 1 - 2 minute delay that the OP talks about. It is a consistant 17-20 seconds, and it seems to happen around the time the device does some sort of network activity. You wake up the device hit the PIN and unlock and it will sit there for 17 - 20 seconds, which is just enough time to miss a call.
I can also reproduce it pretty consistantly by opening a web browser session that has some sort of auto refresh. (For example, I pull up a baseball game on m.espn.com and click the link that has it refresh every 15 seconds.) From that point on I can lock my phone and pretty much reproduce it every time I wake it up. In working with Microsoft they even had me enroll my device into one of their SCMDM setups and the problem still happened so I am fairly sure there is nothing wrong with my setup. - Hello Chris,
thanks for the Hint.
I tried it your way (having a consistent network transfer) this does certainly reproduce the error.
So it is sure that our problem is somehow linked.
I would be glad if you could keep me updated on your testings with Microsoft.
As this problem only occurs when the device is enrolled using SCMDM it does make it look like a VPN issue.
Did the tech support ask you about checking your firewall timeouts?
with regards,
Robert Hi
We are experiencing exactly the same problem with our MDM solution, however not consistently...perhaps 50% of the times you wake the device, and most of the times when the device has around 50% (and less) remaining battery. All devices have strong password policy applied but NOT full device encryption.
- Missing calls due to password screen popping up
- virtual keyboard not responding on password screen for 20-60 seconds
- phone freezing after login for app. 30 seconds
We have only experienced these issues on WM6.1+ Professional, i.e. phones with touch screen. We have primarily tested on HTC Touch Diamond 2, Touch 2, Touch HD, Samsung Omnia II which all suffer from the problems above.We have also opened a support case with MS about these and many other issues regarding MDM. We haven't been able to solve the problems yet :-(
BR
Peter- We are still working with Microsoft on this issue. It sounds like they have a good number of engineers working on the problem so hopefully it is just a matter of time.
Aside from the older Samsung Saga's that have the issue, we've reproduced it on the Touch Pro 2, Omnia 2 and HTC Imagio. We are a Verizon shop, so those are the devices we test on.
I just got an Imagio so I'm doing some checking on my side. The only Imagio we are testing with, my coworker has done some things to greatly reduce the problem.
The Imagio is a wm6.5 device. If he turns off TouchFlo, turns off the 6.5 homescreen skin to go back to the old school home screen that we know and love, and goes into settings | Personal | Phone | CDMA Settings | Time Sync | and disables the auto time sync, the device actually starts to work like it should.. he goes days and days at a time with no issues. (GSM HTC phones have that setting in another location I think.)
I've been trying to do the same things, but I am unable to make mine work any better. I'm not sure why, I need to check all the changes he made...
One thing I've noticed is that even though the device still is getting email/sms while sleeping, when you go to wake up it's like the system isn't refreshing in a timely matter.
For example, when I was testing the Omnia 2 I would wake it up and in the top right corner it would have the time on the title bar. For example, let's say the time was 3:00. If the device said the time was earlier then that, I know it would lock up if I tried to unlock. If I would stare at the screen until the time updated to the correct time, I could enter the password knowing it would not be locked up. Which is why we kinda thought it was related to the network time, but the more I test, the more I am not sure. - Hi
I have the same issue on my Samsung phone. It's a wm6.1 device. The phone slows down and even can't response to the key or screen touch, this makes me can't receive any incoming phone calls. This problem only happened after I do "domain enroll -> vpn connect", and leave the phone idle. Does anyone have any solutions or ideas on this issue? Thank you very much.
Best Regards,
Matthew - @All,
The case is still under investigation. My collegues are sending the devices back to me (HTC Touch HD). They are still not able to answer calls, even text messages are missed, for our kind of business it's essential to answer the phone...(!)
We did sent two of our devices to Redmond for testing purposes...a few weeks ago.....Still haven't heard a thing yet.
In the meantime I'm working on a workaround, and believe it or not....that works fine, although there's no Microsoft logo on it.
The users connected to my MDM environment are decreasing every day, they love the workaround, it makes answering phone calls possible.
Considering the time we have a case opened at Microsoft I found it somewhat conserning that this issue is still not resolved after a few months.
And that is a understatement big time.
Kind regards,
Hans - Hi noordhuh,
I'm glad to hear you find out a workaround on this issue. I'm very interested in the workaround you have mentioned. Would you mind sharing it with us? Thank you.
Best Regard,
Matthew I'm glad to hear you find out a workaround on this issue. I'm very interested in the workaround you have mentioned. Would you mind sharing it with us? Thank you.
Matthew,
I'm very sorry but no. The workaround I created has nothing to do with MDM/Microsoft, and therefore not appropiate for this forum. We still want our MDM environment to work properly, and it will, someday....
Kind regards,
Hans Noordhuis- Hi Noordhuis,
We also are experiencing a very similar problem. I understand your actual workaround may not directly apply to other environments. However, if you could share your insight such as what was the underlying cause of the problem or what was the effect your workaround was trying to create, in order to indirectly reduce or eliminate the problem, that could really help us out here! If you think this is not appropriate to discuss in this forum, do you mind continuing this discussion via email? My email address is "leo11lau@gmail.com".
Thank you so much for your help in advance!
Leo - Hello everyone,
Sounds like this Workaround does pretty much the same as my mistakingly malenrolled device.
As i said before, if you block the management (dm) sessions from the mobile device everything is working fine.
This is why this thread was called "how does mdm device inventory work".
After reading all this posts and learning more about MDM i am sure that the inventory itself is not the main cause of the problem.
What i would be interested in is informations about problem free working devices.
with greetings,
Robert
