User Guide

Policy Computer status

Computers in the PENDING state are processed by Local Policy when their whenToAction time becomes less than the current universal time ².

Retries occur continually by Local Policy until the status becomes OKAY, NEURAL or REPLACED.

Note – Universal time ²

Active Directory records dates in universal time. Workstations and server have the Automatically adjust clock for daylight savings checkbox ticked to allow for this when displaying the time of day to the user. The whenToAction time in the ForestSafe database captures date times from the LDAP. Therefore, these times in the targets report may appear an hour different, depending on the time of year and the geographical location.

Computers with a status of ACC_ONLY, NEUTRAL and REPLACED are ignored by Local Policy.

ForestSafe policy is applied to many computers in parallel but the system applies the policy items that make up that policy in the order described above.

· If every policy action completes successfully then the policy action is seen as OKAY and the status of the computer becomes OKAY.

· If any policy action fails because of a WARNING, then the status becomes WARNING.

· For non-completion in any other state the status is FAILURE.

· Before policy is applied, the computer is tested to see if it is responding. The status is NOT RESPONDING if the computer fails the test.

· If no policy pattern matches are f ound the status becomes NEUTRAL

The system searches the ForestSafe database for computers where policy is outstanding and applies every global policy item that pattern matches with the computers attributes. Having applied policy, the status of the computer is set in the ForestSafe database. A computer can have one of 9 states:

Computer status	Description	Action
ACC_ONLY	A logical computer account exists in Active Directory, but no physical computer is associated with it.	Ignored
PENDING	A policy application is outstanding on this computer,	Process when ready
NEUTRAL	No policy items matched this computer the last time policy was applied.	Ignored
OKAY	The last policy application was successful.	Ignored
NOT RESPONDING	A policy application is outstanding but the computer is not responding	Keep trying
WARNING	A policy application is outstanding but the policy application is failing due to a policy item being unable to complete successfully due to a referential warning.	Keep trying
FAILURE	A policy application is outstanding but the policy application is failing due to the policy or a policy item have a general failure.	Keep trying
REPLACED	This computer was replaced by a new computer with the same host name. It is no longer managed by the system.	Ignored
PROCESSING	This computer is currently being processed by ForestSafe	Busy