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

Setting up prerequisite software on Linux flavors


The OCS Inventory NG management server consists of the following four server roles:

  • Database server: It requires MySQL 4.1 or a higher version that uses the InnoDB engine

  • Communication server: It requires Apache web server 1.3 or higher and some Perl modules (which we are going to present in a minute)

  • Deployment server: It requires any web server (Apache works here too)

  • Administration console: It needs Apache Web Server, PHP 4.3 or higher, and some additional ZIP and GD support

Note

From now on, in the case of software versions, the "+" suffix at the end of version numbers is akin with the "or higher" expression. For example, MySQL 4.1+ means MySQL with at least version number 4.1 or higher.

Apart from those main server components, the following modules are necessary:

  • Apache server needs to be 1.3.X, 2.0.X+ with the following modules:

    • Mod_perl version 1.29+

    • Mod_php version 4.3.2+

  • PHP 4.3.2+ with extensions:

    • ZIP library of ZIP file functions...