Computer Auditing Tools?

JediTrainer asks: "The issue recently came up in my organization that our hardware and software asset information needs to be gathered and stored so that we can import this data into an asset tracking database to further be able to deal with the data. Unfortunately because of circumstances it is difficult to send people to all locations to audit each piece by hand. Ideally, we'd like to be able to track specific information about the hardware (serial number if possible, memory, processor type/speed, hard disks etc), and also detect some of the major software packages that might be installed (OS, office suites, photo editors, development tools etc)."

"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."

Comments

Re:Microsoft SMS?

[dattaway]

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

Unicenter TNG

[paulywog]

Option 1
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.