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

License tracking and software auditing with GLPI


GLPI has enhanced license tracking functionalities. In essence, it grabs the software list, which is installed per computer from the OCS-NG database, and then administers this list of software applications (along with licenses, if it's the case) itself.

Tracking licenses are possible as it auto-detects and categorizes the applications. It is able to decide and associate a said license with its application. The applications are recognized by their names and manufacturers. GLPI uses dictionaries to do this.

The dictionary can use either the OCS's incorporated one or the one that comes with GLPI. We can opt for either of these. These dictionaries contain rules based on which applications are recognized and associated with their manufacturer.

The more complete a dictionary is, the higher is the likelihood of recognizing every application correctly. We can add our entries as well. It's based on criteria, such as if the name of the program begins...