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Hardware

Computer Auditing Tools? 19

Posted by Cliff from the what's-running-in-your-datacenter dept.
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."
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Computer Auditing Tools? More

Computer Auditing Tools?

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  • Everyone's supposed to love open source here (right?) and while I don't know how good Winfingerprint is as far as mass auditing goes, it does recurse directory structure and like that. Used it in the dark days before source control to check DLL versions and whatnot. Plus Winfingerprint's open source [sourceforge.net] so why not give it a look-see?
  • I know this might be a bit off-topic and not what you want but a "low-tech" solution might be to create a web-page for staff to log into and input their equipment, peripherals etc. Either give them very specific information on how to get the more difficult to find information (serial numbers of internal components etc), or write some software that can run on their machine and list it/automatically post it to the server.

    just a thought.
  • I too worked with Unicentre in the past. I would not recommend it to anyone.

    Unicentre is more of an excuse to sell CA's consutling services. In other words CA staff were constantly on site, yet none of them had any idea how the software functioned.

    The project got no-where in 18 months, yet a large fortune had been spent on it.

    And don't get me onto the subject of the Software Update module.

  • If your company went all Free Software-like, you wouldn't have to bother yourselves with silly things like software audits.

    Dancin Santa
  • ssshhh... I'm trolling...

    Sorry you got caught...

    Dancin Santa
  • I work for a company called Attest Systems that publishes an application called 'GASP' that is dedicated solely to asset management.

    The GASP application is scalable to any size environment, utilizing a SQL Server back-end which is used to store asset data.

    Asset data can obtained in various ways, but for the situation you describe it would be best to utilize the 'eClient' which can be plugged into users systems in order to remotely audit their machines whether they are connected to the network via LAN, WAN, or even dial-up.

    Currently the platforms addressed are DOS/Windows(ALL versions)/Mac, but we are working on methods to audit *nix systems in the near future.

    Check out the website at ATTEST.COM [attest.com].

  • For getting hardware and software inventories of Windows machines, you might want to check out http://www.easyvista.com [easyvista.com] It's a bit more affordable than some of the solutions out there. I'm using it where I work.

  • Maybe? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

    --
  • 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.
  • There are a few cross-platform compatible management suites you may obtain. If you were in a Windows only environment, I would suggest using Microsoft's Systems Management Server platform. It has a built-in hardware and software inventory database using SQL on the back end. It comes with Crystal Reports to run full featured reports on hardware, software utilization. Seeing as you only have a few UNIX workstations, this may work fine.

    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.
  • 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.

  • No option 1, or 2 really.... (Score:3)

    by TBone ( 5692 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @06:31AM (#256748) Homepage

    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 may be an option for you (Score:3)

    by booyah ( 28487 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @04:26AM (#256749)
    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 [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
  • nuf said. we dumped it in favor of SMS

  • SMS (Score:3)

    by photozz ( 168291 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [zzotohp]> on Monday April 30, 2001 @10:38AM (#256751) Homepage
    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.

  • Re:Microsoft SMS? (Score:4)

    by dattaway ( 3088 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @06:41AM (#256752) Homepage Journal
    A cheaper alternative is to call the BSA [bsa.org] to handle all your auditing needs. They will fix you up with an offer you can't refuse

  • Unicenter TNG (Score:5)

    by paulywog ( 114255 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @03:49AM (#256753)
    Option 1
    The most prevelant asset managment package I've seen is Computer Associates' [ca.com] Unicenter TNG [ca.com]. 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" [ca.com]

    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, [freshmeat.net] that will do the tracking for you, but not automatically.

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