Monday, March 20, 2006

Automated Computer Inventory

Recently I came across an open-source project that automatically creates and maintains a very detailed inventory of ALL the computers on your network. The project is called OCS Inventory. Its website states that it "... is an application designed to help a network or system administrator keep track of the computer configuration and software installed on the network..." Actually its does much more than that.

It allows the admin to retrieve any registry key from the client computer, a highly detailed list of hardware installed (even details of the attached devices like monitors), a web interface to search the inventory etc.

There have been some problems that I have been trying to tackle for a long time on my 100 PC network. Number 1 on the list was to disable all USBs so that our propriety data could not be copied onto USB flash disks and carried out of the office by employees; or employees do not bring in and execute software on their PCs (associated problems are with virus contaminated software) which might cause havoc on my network. Using the inventory I was able to clearly identify which PCs on the network had their USBs still active. I also found 2 PCs on my network using ancient 10 MBps network cards.

It has helped me map out an upgrade plan for both software and hardware. I would recommend any network admin to give it a try. Setup is very simple, the server runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS, UNIX etc.

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