OCS Inventory NG

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OCS Inventory NG uses an agent, which runs the inventory on client computers, and a management server, which centralizes inventory results, allow viewing inventory results and creating deployment packages.

Communications between agents and management server are done using HTTP/HTTPS protocols. All data are formatted in Zlib compressed XML to reduce network traffic average.

Agents may be installed on client computers. We provide a tool to deploy it through login scripts or Active Directory GPO under Windows OS. Under Linux OS, agent must be installed manually.

Management server contains 4 main components:

• Database server, which store inventory information.
• Communication server, which will handle HTTP communications between database server and agents.
• Deployment server, which store all package deployment configuration (require HTTPS!)
• Administration console, which will allow administrators to query the database server through their favorite browser.

These 4 components can be hosted on a single computer or on different computers to allow load balancing. For more than 10000 inventoried computers, it is better to use at least 2 different servers, one for the database server + Communication server and the other for a database replica + Administration server + Deployement server.

NB: If you want to use multiple servers to host OCS inventory NG management server, we recommend that you setup it on Linux computers. OCS Inventory NG server for Windows comes as an integrated package containing all required components (apache, perl, php, mod_perl, mysql…).

Database server currently can only be MySQL 4.1 or higher.

Communication server needs Apache Web Server 1.3.X/2.X and is written in PERL as an Apache module. Why ? Because PERL script is compiled when Apache starts, and not at each request. This is better for performance issue. Communication server may require some additional PERL module, depending your distribution.

Deployment server needs any Web Server with SSL enabled.

Administration console is written in PHP 4.1 (or higher) and runs under Apache Web Server 1.3.X/2.X (but may run under other web servers). Administration server requires ZIP and GD capabilities enabled in PHP in order to use deployment features.

Windows agent is written in C++ (needs MS Visual C++ 6 Service Pack 5 or higher and MS Platform SDK Februray 2003 or newest to compile) and NSIS scripts for logon script or GPO automatic deployment tool.

Linux agent is written in PERL and C languages and may need some additional PERL module to handle XML and Zlib compression, depending your distribution. It also use dmidecode.