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

Acknowledgement

First and foremost, I'd like to thank the outrageous support from my parents and close friends. My girlfriend, Dea, for accepting my way of dealing with everything in life. Special thanks to Gabor Bernat, I'm grateful for those well-thought comments regarding the manuscript. My colleague, Ceclan Sandor, for keeping up with support over time. Alina D., Lehel M., and Szilard N. for their encouragements and believing in me.

A huge thank you to my technical reviewer—Jeff Prater, you cannot imagine the impact your input has had on this book. You have definitely gone beyond the call of duty while reviewing and researching. Robert Dunham, for kick-starting me in my writing endeavors many years ago. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be a published author now.

Moreover, I'd like to thank the professional and entirely author-centric team from Packt Publishing, especially Ashwin Shetty, Dilip Venkatesh, Duane Moraes, Hyacintha D'Souza, Neha Patwari, Priya Mukherji, Smita Solanki and everyone else. All of your hard work made this book possible. My sincere thanks for putting up with my hectic schedule.

Lastly, I consider this book as a tribute to the developers of OCS Inventory NG, GLPI, and the Open Source community. I also appreciate the readers of this book and truly hope that my work helps a great deal in succeeding to fulfill their IT inventory demands.

And finally, thanks James Payne for understanding my lack of activity from the Shed. Oh, and of course, everyone from the DevHardware Forums—You guys are fantastic!