From COKS - Open Source Center - Slovenia

Open Computer and Software Inventory Next Generation (OCS inventory NG) is free software that enables users to inventory their IT assets. OCS-NG collects information about the hard- and software of networked machines running the OCS client program ("OCS Inventory Agent"). OCS can be used to visualize the inventory through a web interface. Furthermore, OCS comprises the possibility of deploying applications on the computers according to search criteria. Agent-side IpDiscover makes it possible to know the entirety of networked computers and devices.

Internal operation

OCS is based on current standards. The dialogue between client machines and the server is based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the formatting of the data is done in XML.

Server

The management server uses Apache, MySQL and Perl. OCS is multi-platform: it runs under Unices as well as under Microsoft Windows (2000 or later).

Thanks to its very simple design and the use of mod_perl, server-side performance is very good. A modest machine can thus inventory several thousands of machines.

Agents

In order to collect the maximum of information possible, the agents are installed on the machines to inventory.

• Windows,
• Linux,
• Mac OS X (nonofficial),
• Sun Solaris (nonofficial),
• IBM AIX (nonofficial).

Web Interface

An optional web interface written in PHP offers complementary services:

• consultation of the inventory
• user rights management
• an interface of breakdown service (or Helpdesk) for the technicians