Inventorying Software
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As an offshoot of the Helpdesk thread.
What does everyone use to manage/monitor/record inventory and inventory changes?
Right now I am using a mediawiki entry for each computer. On it I record:
- Model Number
- Serial Number
- Windows Key
- Nitro Key
- Current User
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We have used wikis in the past. Right now we are using an Excel spreadsheet that is hosted on SharePoint (so multiple people can access and edit it at once, if needed.)
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In the past we have used Spiceworks for this, but scanning and inventory are not synonymous and we like to keep those functions separate.
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For a while we were using a Ruby on Rails application for this, once that we had developed in house, and we are considering going down that path (not necessarily RoR) again when resources allow for it. But for now the Excel Spreadsheet does the trick.
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@scottalanmiller said:
For a while we were using a Ruby on Rails application for this, once that we had developed in house, and we are considering going down that path (not necessarily RoR) again when resources allow for it. But for now the Excel Spreadsheet does the trick.
Is the excel spreadsheet for internal use only? Or do you also include client computers?
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@coliver said:
Is the excel spreadsheet for internal use only? Or do you also include client computers?
All machines, but is accessible only to our staff. Clients do not see it. That's a key reason for wanting to move to something more robust and complex so that there can be client exposure for their own data.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
Is the excel spreadsheet for internal use only? Or do you also include client computers?
All machines, but is accessible only to our staff. Clients do not see it. That's a key reason for wanting to move to something more robust and complex so that there can be client exposure for their own data.
Does a Sharepoint "Wiki" allow that to happen? It seems to have some fairly indepth permissions.
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@coliver said:
Does a Sharepoint "Wiki" allow that to happen? It seems to have some fairly indepth permissions.
If we did a wiki page per device, yes, but would be amazingly cumbersome to manage.
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I think size plays a very big role here. Wikis are nice when you are smaller. A spreadsheet can be nice, Google Apps or something like that. The lack of scanning inventories is tough as you have to update everything manually.
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When I've really needed it I've wrote our own. We used Access as the Inventory Database and use some scanning scripts. The Scanned inventory would go to a scan table and was not automatically added to inventory as it would not always be correct. And sometimes would be duplicate. What had look up pieces to the access program. You could to reports based on when computers needed to be replace (it was 3 yr replacement). Reports of when to Audit computers (we audited every 3-6 months), What software was one it. There was a table of the software and install licenses we had which would be related to the computers so you could see what was installed where and with what licenses etc. This worked very well for our approx 500 computers.
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Here are some open source packages:
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Lansweeper is paid but not that expensive per node: http://www.lansweeper.com/pc-network-inventory-software.aspx
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Here are some open source packages:
Open Audit hasn't been updated in FOREVER (like since 2007), but it was kinda cool in that the inventory submission occurred via HTTP. I was a big advocate of this before I had moved to Spiceworks.
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@Rob-Dunn said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
Here are some open source packages:
Open Audit hasn't been updated in FOREVER (like since 2007), but it was kinda cool in that the inventory submission occurred via HTTP. I was a big advocate of this before I had moved to Spiceworks.
The latest version was released this month https://community.opmantek.com/display/OA/Release+Notes+for+Open-AudIT+v1.6.4
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@Rob-Dunn said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
Here are some open source packages:
Open Audit hasn't been updated in FOREVER (like since 2007), but it was kinda cool in that the inventory submission occurred via HTTP. I was a big advocate of this before I had moved to Spiceworks.
The latest version was released this month https://community.opmantek.com/display/OA/Release+Notes+for+Open-AudIT+v1.6.4
Ah - I gave up on him, but he's been touting version 2.0 since as long as I can remember...
