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Computer Auditing Tools?
"The company in question is mostly running Windows (9x/NT/2000) machines, but there are a number of Sun and Linux boxes which should be tracked as well, ideally, although we can probably get those by hand since they're the minority in this case.
So far in my search I've found Confound, which seems to do an ok job tracking hardware information on Win9x platforms, but unfortunately crashes on my NT box. Basically, the requirement will be to be able to run the software periodically remotely, either through login scripts or by sending the app via email to each employee. As much data as possible should be gathered about the hardware and software on that station, and then sent to a server where it will be stored and processed. As a company, we'd probably like to re-audit the computers in the organization every few months (at least once a year) to make sure the data's as clean as possible.
Does anyone have any products in mind that might do this? Obviously, cost is a factor (free is ideal, but it doesn't have to be - we could probably budget out a couple thousand dollars). The most ideal would be a solution with source code which I might be able to modify so that we can adjust what it gathered and how it is sent to the server, or at least be flexible in that way. Any product that meets this should reduce (but will not completely eliminate, I know) the need to have people physically do this work."
We have had good experiences with Track-It from http://www.blueocean.com/
How are you getting it to talk to UNIX/Linux? We are testing SMS 2 right now, I haven't seen anything about inventorying *NIX. It would be nice to get SMS to do so.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
SMS is sweet. If you're using 'managed desktops;' i.e. Compaq, Dell, etc etc, you'll find plugins. Check out the relatively new Web Reporting Interface from the SMS website.
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Intel makes the LANdesk product, which features Windows and UNIX agents for inventory, remote control and tracking. In some ways SMS is a clone of LANdesk, so there is not a very high learning curve to deploy their product. The company I work for does a lot of corporate LANdesk rollouts, apparently it is a decent product.
-Pat
I'll look into Option 1 to see what it supports. Thanks for the info. Hopefully it can run as an agent on client workstations or something.
:)
As for tech tracker, it doesn't really meet what I was asking for. I don't really need a tracking tool so much as I need to be able to gather the data.
Eventually I might be able to get around to writing something. Preferably, though, I'd like to start with something that I can improve on, rather than work from scratch (because time is something I have little of right now). Of course I wouldn't mind re-contributing any improvements I make to the community
The tracking application (like Tech Tracker) is easy. It's just a set of screens plugging away with data in a database somewhere. Finding out what's out there to populate that data seems to be harder. When you're talking potentially (as an example) 1000 workstations in a dozen offices around the country, it starts to become prohibitive to have people go around and audit them by hand.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
If your company went all Free Software-like, you wouldn't have to bother yourselves with silly things like software audits
Perhaps from a legal perspective that might be the case. However, I think that given a company of a certain size you still want to audit what's out there. For example, if some employees are running an application in which a major security flaw was discovered, would you not want to know which machines have the affected software in order to be able to update them? We've seen critical patches issued for just about every major piece of software out there.
Software also includes OS. I would want to know which Linux kernels are out there (for example, to fix the security flaws which existed in the < 2.2.14 kernels), just as I would want to know what versions of NT are on the network so I can make sure people have been keeping up with their service packs.
Software auditing is more than checking license compliance. It's overall management of your network and your security. The larger the organization, the more important this becomes, since any one vulnerability in the most obscure location can still expose your systems to attacks and exploits.
I conclude that all software, even free software needs to be managed. Therefore, the idea of an audit doesn't seem at all silly to me.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
As of about a year ago, Unicenter's Asset Management software does not run on Linux. It does not run well on a number of UNIX's. it's really only good for tracking Windows workstations. It "supports" Linux in as far as tehre are some monitoring agents that run on it. However, it is far from a fully supported O/S across the baord of Unicenter applications.
As far as option 2, if they were interested in writing theor own application to collect all of this information, they wouldn't be telling us about their requirements and asking here about where to BUY Asset Management software. That being said, I tend to think that the only way you are going to get what you want is to do some writing on your own. Pick a piece of software that does most of what you want in Windows, find a standard format for reporting, then use shell scripts on your UNIX's to generate the appropriate information. You can use the various dmesg and /proc/sys info in Linux, the Symon stuff from Solaris, smit in AIX, etc etc etc.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
I had to make sure that it wasn't one of my co-workers posting this question first, its very similar to my companies current situation. We invested in a software package called Visual Audit Pro from Vision Soft www.visionsoft.com... seems to be a decent program that can run at given intervals, and collects varying amounts of data (you can ask it to take more or less). seems to run well enough for us, but doesn't offer a *nix solution
#include sig.h
nuf said. we dumped it in favor of SMS
Dirty Pirate Hooker
The most powerful tool for doing what you are asking is going to be Microsoft SMS. The client piece can me installed through Novel login scripts, NT login scripts, by hand, or whatever. It can do hardware auto-discovery and monitoring, produce a list of what type of PC's, what hard drives and NIC's are present,..ECT... It can also push out software updated and automatically uninstall software that doesn't belong. It is a little pricey, but it should do everything you want and more. We are in the middle of an SMS roll out now, and it's looking cool.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
A cheaper alternative is to call the BSA to handle all your auditing needs. They will fix you up with an offer you can't refuse
The most prevelant asset managment package I've seen is Computer Associates' Unicenter TNG. This package has an incredible number of features depending upon how much you want to spend. Here's the package you're most interested in.
"Asset Managment Option"
The nice thing about Unicenter TNG is that it supports "DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2, Macintosh, UNIX, and VMS." I believe that CA is also porting many of its applications to Linux. Check with your local sales associate for more information...
Option 2:
Build your own utility to get exactly the information you want. If you limit the set of information that you want to something fairly small, it shouldn't be too dificult to write a little client-server that sends asset data from each workstation to a server. Then you could make it cross-platform and Open Source it for the rest of us.
Here's a web based tool, Tech Tracker, that will do the tracking for you, but not automatically.