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

Summary


The focus of this chapter was to achieve familiarity with the user interface of the OCS web console. First, we explained what each toolbar icon does, the kind of functionalities that are hidden beyond those tiny images, and so on. Practically, we can do almost anything inside the web console; even tune server-side variables that affect the behavior of the inventory. It's important to take some time to be comfortable surfing through toolbars.

We then elaborated on some configuration best practices and tips. We learned how to set up new users with privileged access rights. Then we introduced and explained the concept of TAG-based repartition. In case of medium-to-large organizations, this is a huge need, but if it's implemented appropriately it helps in case of small infrastructures as well. If the functionality is incorporated into OCS-NG, why not learn to use it the right way?

Practice has taught us that some preventive measures are to be taken in order to maintain a clean and ordered...