There are many ways to keep track of your IT inventory. We have experienced great success with an Open Source solution that can automate the process of managing the inventory of a network. It can tell you what is on your network, how it is configured and when it changes. It works with Windows, Mac and Linux systems and can be customized to work in most network environments.
3. Necessity of Inventory Systems
• Ignorance is not a valid excuse for
Network Administrators
• Sample Questions:
o Which systems are near the end of their warranty?
o Which Towers contain model #*** video card?
o Which IPs are in use and where?
o How many licenses are left for X software?
o Which systems don't have the MS security patch that
was released yesterday?
the problem
4. Problems of Inventory Systems
• Manual entry is Error Prone
o Especially in complex systems
• Budget restrictions
o Economic drought means cheaper solutions are that much more favorable
the problem
5. Manual Entry = Errors
Excel Spreadsheets
Benefits
- query by column
- MS ‘familiarity’
Disadvantages
- manual entry
- MS knowledge required
- possible to overwrite data
- file naming conventions & storage
- MS advanced function can be
dangerous
the problem
6. Origin of Open-Audit
• Open Source
http://winventory.sourceforge.net/
• Mark Unwin had written a script to audit
computers on a network, saw the need to
extend it (to have a query-able web
interface). In 2005 the project was
originally released via the GPL
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html)
• wmi, vbscript, mysql & php
background
7. Free Software License
• Open-AudIT is licensed under the terms of the GNU
General Public License Version 2 as published by the
Free Software Foundation. This gives you legal
permission to copy, distribute and/or modify Open-AudIT
under certain conditions. Read the 'LICENSE' file in the
Open-AudIT distribution or read the online version of the
license for more details.
• Open-AudIT is provided AS IS with NO WARRANTY OF
ANY KIND, INCLUDING THE WARRANTY OF DESIGN,
MERCHANTABILITY, AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
background
8. No Warranty???
Consider the notion put forth by Carla Schroder (editor of
Linux Today), that it is our duty to support Open Source
Software ('editors note: you get what you pay for ').
By using the software and contributing to it's development
(via forums or writing code), we add to it's value and
usability.
background
9. Open-Audit is FREE
• FreeAsInBeer and FreeAsInSpeech
• Under the creative commons license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/
• There is a good size user group and active
forum
benefits
11. Open-Audit = Automation
Overview
Open Audit audits the hardware
and software it discovers on your
computers, and posts its findings
to a MySQL database. From there
the data is presented in a clean
and readable form via a set of PHP
web pages.
A.Hull (Moderator,
Open-Audit forum )
s
the solution
13. Free: Automated data collecting
• Hardware
• Software
• Operating System Settings
• Security Settings
• Users and Groups
• Disk Usage Graphs
• Audit History
benefits
14. Free: Data Reports
• Operating System Type
• IE Versions
• Firefox Versions
• Memory Sizes
• Processor Types and Speeds
• Hard Disk sizes
• Software Keys
• Detected Network Servers
• Newly Detected Software
• Low Disk Space
• Systems not audited for xxx days
• Export to Inkscape, Dia, PDF
benefits
16. Not Free: Cost of ownership
Requirements: Beneficial components:
• Web server • Apache (recommended)
• PHP • Windows Domain
• MySQL • Domain Admin account
• Secured installation • Secured LAN
the catch
17. Not Free: Knowledge and Skills
Q: We are a windows shop
A: XAMPP is an easy to install Apache
distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl.
Q: No knowledge of PHP/MySQL
A: No configuration, easy to install Open
Audit. Must possess basic sysadmin
troubleshooting and problem solving skills.
After all, it is a tool, not an employee.
the catch
19. How Open-Audit works
Roles of Components:
• Application resides on Web Sever
• Domain Admin account to remote audit machines
If there is no Domain admin account:
• Local machine can have a scheduled job to regularly
audit and send results to the server
mechanics
20. Server installation: Mac (osX 10.4)
Up and running in minutes (overview):
• Turn on web sharing
• Install MySQL (DMG available from project site)
• Install PHP (Entropy PHP 5.2.9-7.pkg is an easy solution)
• Optional SQL GUI
• Create a database and user
• Subversion installation (Follow instructions from WikiHow )
• Check Out Open-Audit from repository
• Follow web based installation guide
o http://server-address/open-audit/
mechanics
21. Server installation: Linux (Centos)
Up and running in minutes (overview):
• yum install httpd subversion mysql php php-mysql php-common
• create database and user
• svn co https://open-audit.svn..../trunk /var/www/open-audit/
• /etc/init.d/httpd start
• /etc/init.d/mysqld start
• Follow web install instructions
mechanics
22. Server installation: windows
Up and running in minutes (overview):
• Download and install XAMPP & tortoisesvn
• Create database and user
• Grab a copy of Open-Audit from svn repository
• Follow web based installation guide
o http://server-address/open-audit/
mechanics
23. Client installation
** note:
• No client installation is needed if all computers are on a domain and
you have domain admin account
Overview:
• Scheduled task to run .cmd file on network share
o network share has the audit.config file which points
to the server
• Windows audit with vbs script
• Unix audit with shell script
mechanics