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Enterprise User Manual


Chapter 7

Hardware Inventory


The Update Hardware Inventory Operation provide up-to-date hardware configuration information on all PC platforms, from DOS to Windows 2003. You can use this information to help plan hardware upgrades, software installations and upgrades, and to help answer support problems. Running regular hardware inventories can help detect unauthorized changes, such as disk upgrades, because changes are highlighted and recorded in comprehensive PC histories. By default, Enterprise is supplied with two hardware inventory Operations:

To collect hardware inventory data:
  1. Click the Operation in the Console. The Select Clients dialog is displayed.
  2. Select the Clients or Groups for which you want to collect hardware data and click the OK button.

You can also submit hardware inventory Operations as Scheduled Jobs, enabling you to automate the updating of your Site Database. No inventory results are displayed. However, the Job publishes the data to the Site Database and generates events as normal.

Viewing Hardware Inventory Results

The Hardware Inventory Results dialog presents the hardware information by category. To display the information in a category, select its tab at the top of the dialog, or right-click any tab and choose the category from the list.

Capture Date Information

If you are viewing the Hardware Inventory Results for an individual Client, the capture date is displayed in the dialog's title bar.

To print a formatted report, or to save the data to a text file, click the Print button.

Change Notification

A red circle is shown on each tab where the information has changed since the previous hardware inventory. Click the Changes button to display tabs that contain changed information.

When you run the Update Hardware Inventory Interactively Operation without publishing to the database, you can recall the current stored hardware details (see "Viewing Stored Hardware Details") and conduct a value-by-value check using the two displays side-by-side. If you publish the new data to the database, the changes are held in the Changes table.

Viewing Stored Hardware Details

To view the Hardware Inventory data stored in the Site Database, right-click a Client and choose Hardware Details from the shortcut menu.

Hardware Details in the Console

Selected hardware inventory data is displayed when you open a Group in the Console's Clients folder. This information is automatically refreshed after an Operation, and enables you to quickly inspect the key details.

Hardware Change History

To view the hardware configuration changes to a PC, use one of the following methods:

From the Changes button on the Hardware Details tab

DBViewer enables you to display the changes affecting selected PCs. The Stored Change History view displays all changes on the selected PC; the Stored Hardware Changes view displays hardware changes only. You can also use DBViewer to produce customized views of your data and to export your data in HTML format.

From the Reports folder in the Console

The Hardware History Summary and History Summary reports are produced in Crystal Reports. These reports are in a fixed format and they can be used with any selected PCs. Changes are displayed when the results are published to the database.

To remove old changes from the Changes Table (by default, anything older than 60 days), click the Delete Change History Data Operation in the Console.

Job Logs and Client Logs

Scheduled Hardware Inventory Operations generate a Job Log. To view the log, right-click the log entry in the Jobs folder.

The Client Log, attached to the main Job Log, lists all the Clients and Resources that the Job attempted to process, and the Job status for each Client.

Event Log

Status changes detected during a hardware inventory Operation are held as Events. Scheduled inventory Operations retain the Events in the Event Log, which is accessed from the Job Log. Use the Event viewer to organize Hardware Inventory Events by type, and by PC.

For Hardware Inventory, the Event types are as follows:
Event
Description
SysInfo
System information
SysFile
System Files - dates and sizes
DOS
DOS settings
Memory
Memory information
Screen
Basic display information
Serial
Serial ports
Printer
Printer ports
Mouse
Mouse
NetCard
Network card
Floppy
Diskette
Disk
Hard disk
Drives
Drives including logical drives
Environment
System or user environment
variables
ExtROM
Extension ROMs
DevDrv
Device drivers
IRQ
IRQs
SysProg
System programs
QDeck
QuarterDeck products
NetDrv
NetDrv Network drivers
NetProto
Network protocols - includes stacks
MemMap
Memory map
ISR
Interrupt service routines
CPU
Processor information
USERINFO
User information strings
Drvshare
Share names
Prnshare
Printer shares
Multimedia
Multimedia device names
SMS
Current SMS logon server, SMSID, NOIDMIF path

Printing Hardware Details

The tabbed Hardware Inventory dialog features a Print button. This appears from an interactive Operation and when you select Hardware Details from the Clients shortcut menu. The Print button enables you to nominate a specific printer and to change printer settings, and also to save a copy of the report in a text file.

The Event list view and the Job Log list view can both be printed from the File menu.

It is also possible to export selected Events to a file using the Log to File option in the Event Viewer's shortcut menu.

Customizing Hardware Inventory Operations

You can customize Hardware inventory Operations using the Customize Hardware Inventory dialog. To display this dialog, right-click an Update Hardware Inventory Operation in the Console, then choose Customize, and use the tabs to specify the options you want to use.

General

Names and describes the Operation. You can also specify a default Scheduler for the Operation when it is submitted as a Job.

Reporting

Generates a report from the results of the Operation. This report can be in a standard format or in a user-specified format.

Hardware

This tab features the most significant Hardware Inventory settings. The options in this tab are described in the next section.

Hardware Inventory Options

Use the Hardware tab to control how hardware inventory Operations work:

Display hardware inventory results

Displays the hardware inventory results on screen when you run the Operation interactively. The data for each Client is displayed in a separate dialog. Selecting this check box has no effect when the Operation is submitted as a Job.

Use the Event Viewer to display any events generated by the Operation.
Save results to the database in binary format

Stores hardware inventory data in binary format. This format is used internally by Enterprise to increase efficiency and improve response times of components that use or display hardware inventory data. Binary hardware data is stored in database tables with names that are prefixed with the string HARD.

Save results to the database in text format

Stores uncompacted hardware inventory data to the Site Database. Select this option when you want to use the hardware data in the standard reports and Views supplied with Enterprise, or when you want to export the data for use in other applications. Hardware data in text format is stored in tables with names that are prefixed HW.

Data Expiry

By default, Enterprise retains only one copy of the hardware data in text format and clears the data held in the hardware inventory tables when you next save the results of a Hardware Inventory Operation to the database. If you want to retain previous data to make comparisons between the current and previous states of PCs, enter the period for which you want to retain the previous data in this field.

For example, if you specify a value of 60 days, the hardware data is retained for 60 days before it is replaced when new data is saved to the database.

Refresh user prompt questions

User prompt files are used to request information directly from users and their PCs. To send new user prompt files to the selected Client PCs when you run this Operation, select this check box, enter the location and name of the prompt file in the User prompt reference path and file field, and click Reload.

To update the current user prompts, click the Edit button.

The standard Enterprise installation contains a Get User Data Operation, which is pre-configured to collect information from Client users with a default prompt file. For more information on using this Operation, and creating and configuring prompt files, see Chapter 8, "User Prompting".

Exporting Hardware Inventory Data

If you want to generate a report containing the highest-level hardware inventory data, you can create customized reports from the Update Hardware Inventory Operations. Using the Update Hardware Inventory Operation to generate tokenized reports enables you to access many more fields than are available to Crystal Reports. It also enables you to export data to a delimited file for use in external applications for further analysis and processing.

For printed reports, you can define the layout of the report file using space and tab characters, and by specifying the location of tokens on the page. Non-token data is printed without alteration.

You can build your own set of Report templates. For data export, construct a single line template format string, with the tokens and a suitable separator character. Note that because commas may be used in some data items, we recommend you use a different delimiter character in the token file. Example tokenized report definitions are available in the Console's install directory:

Refer to the online help for more information and a comprehensive list of available tokens.

Many token names are different from the corresponding field names in the Database. Token names must be in upper case.

If you do not want to generate tokenized reports each time you run an Update Hardware Inventory Operation, create a new variant of the Operation that generates a tokenized report.

Selecting Clients for Inventory Operations

Update Hardware Inventory Operations record the date of the last successful update in the $HWDATE field of each Client in the NODEPROP Table. Use this field to create a Dynamic Group, which automatically identifies Clients that require an inventory update.

For example, the filter expression:

 SELECT DISTINCT NODENAME FROM HWUPDATE WHERE HWDATE < #$MM/DD/YY(-31)$#

identifies all Clients that have not been successfully scanned for more than a month. This enables you to automatically repeat scan only those Clients whose data is out of date.

Hardware Inventory and Clients

The Enterprise Client software regularly collects hardware inventory information from Client PCs. Its hardware inventory programs run on Client PCs, and save the inventory data in encrypted files so that users cannot view and edit the details.

The hardware inventory programs are designed to prevent disruption to Client users. However, if you want to restrict the data collected, or the frequency of collection, you can configure the programs using parameters in the LUCLIENT.INI file. For more information, see "Controlling Client Behavior", or refer to LUCLIENT.TXT in the Client kit, which contains details of all settings in the .INI file.

Client Components

The Enterprise data capture process collects hardware, system software, and user-specified information from Client PCs using the following programs. The Client installation procedure automatically creates a shortcut to run the programs on the target PC.

CLBOOT16/32

The main Client boot control programs responsible for initializing the Client environment (such as configuring file sharing), and sequencing all Client startup functions. Some Client functions are performed by CLBOOT itself, others are carried out by the supporting programs.

LUHSETUP.EXE and LUHDWCHK.EXE

These DOS-level hardware test programs run on all platforms. They are called from LUHBOOT.BAT, and create and update an encrypted binary file, LUHDWCHK.LOG, which contains low-level inventory data.

LUSMBIOS.EXE

Extracts selected data from the BIOS of DMI enabled PCs. This removes the need to install DCOM on older PCs.

LUTINFOW32.EXE

Prompts Client users to enter ancillary information, such as the user's name and telephone number, and collects the replies. You can customize the questions, explanatory text, and default responses in the Site Creation Wizard, or by using the Get User Data Operation. For more information, see Chapter 8, "User Prompting".

WINCHK16/32.EXE

Windows hardware test programs, which provide higher-level inventory data, such as detailed network configuration, Windows display and printer settings. The data is saved in WINCHK.DAT.

Hardware Inventory Capture for DOS Clients

PCs that do not use Windows require manual assistance during installation, and are not able to capture as much detail as Windows Clients. DOS Client capture uses the following components:

LUHSETUP.EXE/LUHDWCHK.EXE

DOS-level checking programs.

LUTINFO.EXE

A DOS version of the user-prompting program.

STARTSRV.BAT

A batch file which sequences these components. This file is also responsible for loading the file access SERVER TSR. This file must be called from AUTOEXEC.BAT, or from some other network startup procedure, once the network and redirector have been installed.

Disabling Hardware Inventory Components on Clients

The DOS Checker, Windows Checker, DMI BIOS Checker, and User Prompting components of the Hardware Inventory capture process are enabled by default. You can configure the data capture process to disable some aspects entirely, or to disable specific and individual tests.

The Client startup process is controlled by the LUCLIENT.INI file in the \PC-Duo Enterprise directory of Client PCs. Edit this file to control the Client software. For more information, see "Controlling Client Behavior".

Disabling the DOS Checker

The DOS Checker performs low-level hardware tests. Although it is designed to be as unintrusive as possible, some unusual combinations of hardware and software can cause problems, such as DOS-level program errors. These problems are usually caused by system-level software that does not respond correctly to the information requests made by the checker and you can disable tests that cause problems. This reduces the level of detail generated, but enables the checker to continue.

Do not disable the DOS checker unless you do not want to collect hardware inventory data. The checker generates the LUHDWCHK.LOG file, which is used by all hardware inventory functions.
To disable the DOS Checker, set:
 [DOS Checker] Disabled=Yes

Disabling the Windows Checker

Disabling the Windows checker prevents Enterprise from collecting much higher-level inventory data. However, it is unlikely that you will need to disable this checker as it is invisible to Client users and does not use low-level hardware tests.

To disable the Windows Checker, set:
 [Windows Checker] Disabled=Yes

Disabling the DMI BIOS Checker

The DMI BIOS Checker collects Serial Number, Manufacturer and Model information from the PC. If you don't need this information, you can disable to improve the Client startup speed.

To disable the DMI BIOS Checker, set:
 [DMI BIOS Checker] Disabled=Yes

Disabling User Prompting

User Prompting collects information from Client users and system and registry variables on Client PCs. For more information, see Chapter 8, "User Prompting". If you don't need this information, you can disable this feature.

To disable User Prompting, set:
 [User Prompting] Disabled=Yes

Performing a Custom Client Installation

The SETUP program, which installs the Client software on all Windows platforms, enables you to select those parts of the Hardware Inventory capture process you want to use. Normally, all capture components are enabled, but you can customize the Client Installation to selectively disable the components that are not required.

If the Client software has already been installed, you can use the Configure Clients Operation to reconfigure Clients from the Console. For more information, see "Reconfiguring Clients after Installation".


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