Book Image

IT Inventory and Resource Management with OCS Inventory NG 1.02

Book Image

IT Inventory and Resource Management with OCS Inventory NG 1.02

Overview of this book

OCS Inventory NG is a cross-platform, open-source inventory and asset management solution. It brings more than plentiful features to the table to satisfy the business needs of small-to-large organizations with up to tens of thousands of computers. However, to put this inventory solution to optimum use requires a lot of skill.This book will lead you through the steps of implementing OCS-NG until you master working with it. This book aims at reducing efforts involved in resource management. The solution gives a robust foundation on top of which we can implement other third party applications, plugins, and much more.This book begins with the basics—it explains what IT inventorying needs are to be met in the real-world. Then, it covers a step-by-step approach to everything you need to know to set up and implement OCS-NG as a centralized inventory solution to meet all these requirements. It delves deeper into carrying out inventory tasks with every chapter.You will learn how to choose the best agent type and deployment method. We discuss the process of gathering inventory data and cover techniques for creating and deploying packages. You will also learn how to acquire added benefits with the use of plugins. We discuss best practices on inventorying and troubleshooting agent-related problems. The book presents real-world inventorying scenarios along with their solutions. You will basically learn how to use OCS-NG to get the most out of it.As a conclusion, if you want to learn about a free solution that fulfils inventorying necessities of the real-world, this is the book for you.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
IT Inventory and Resource Management with OCS Inventory NG 1.02
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewer
Preface
Keeping Pace with Version Updates—Glancing over the changelog of the Latest Release

Chapter 2. Setting up an OCS Inventory NG Management Server

There's one fantastic analogy to building servers, even though it might seem hilarious. The process is like architecture, for example, building a house. Shocking, isn't it? Yes! Nevertheless, it makes sense. First, we need a rock solid foundation. Depending on your point of view, this can either be the hardware platform or the server software backend platform.

The foundation requires the necessary materials. These are akin to software prerequisites in case of software application, for example, Perl modules. When the foundation is laid, and when it seems to be solid (meaning the material is conglomerated), which means every module and component gets along well with the other items, we can say we are ready to begin building the house. The house itself can stand for the application we're going to install.

Right now, the house we're going to install is the OCS Inventory NG management server. The foundation is a well-rounded AMP stack...