IPInventory FAQ and Suggestions
Q: WMI control is needed for
Windows 98.
A: The Microsoft WMI control can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=98a4c5ba-337b-4e92-8c18-a63847760ea5&displaylang=en
Q: Can I use IP Inventory™ to manage the software licences?
A : Yes, the IP Inventory™ Server can help you maintain
the evidence of the operating system licences installed on the
computers in your Local Area Network. When creating repots, you
can choose to highlight the software licences which have
exceeded their licensing period. These licences will appear
highlighted with the color you have choosen in the Highlight
color option from the Options menu.
The Reports button has a small arrow on its right side:
clicking on this arrow displays a short drop down list, which
controls additional options related to this button. In this
case, the available options are: General reports and Extended
reports.
When clicking on the small arrow of the Reports button, you
will notice that the General reports entry is written in bold.
This means that General reports is the default action
associated with the Reports button; in other words, when
clicking on the Reports button, the General reports dialog box
will appear.
Q: I want to know more about creating reports. Can you help me?
A : IP Inventory™ Server can create 2 types of reports:
the General Reports and the Extended Reports.
With the General reports, you can choose what information will
be included in the report, with respect to the available
categories - OS info, Software info, Hardware info and Other
hardware info. More than that, you can apply filters, selecting
the computers you want to include information from.
You can also choose if the General reports will list each
client's configuration separately, or if the report should
group all information available into categories.
With the Extended reports you can group all information
retrieved from the clients in a treeview structure containing
all categories. You can expand or collapse all categories
composing the treeview by clicking on the appropriate symbols
(" + " to expand and " - " to collapse). Expanding a category
displays all items composing the selected category, while
clicking on a certain item in the expanded category displays in
the right panel of the Extended reports window information
about all clients using the selected item.
Q : The Other Hardware info panel reads nothing... What's wrong?
A : The Other hardware info option was designed in order to
allow the clients to define hardware items other than those
typically related to IT. As the IP Inventory™ Server can
maintain the evidence of these hardware items which are usualy
present in all offices, clients may use this option to define
items as chairs, desks, phone, fax machines, etc.
Unlike the common hardware items, these items cannot be
identified by the IP Inventory™ Server, so each client
must define them manually. If the Other hardware panel reads
nothing, most probably the selected client has not defined its
items.
Q : Tell me about sending custom Hardware items list to clients.
A : Using the Hardware items option in the General options
dialog box, you can specify custom hardware configuration lists
that will be sent to selected clients. For example, if some
uncommon hardware items are installed on a certain computer in
the network, and the operating system fails to identify them
correctly, you can manually add them to a configuration list
that will be sent to the selected client, so that the client's
configuration will appear correctly in the IP Inventory™
Server configuration lists.
Under the Ping exclusion list options you'll find a group of
four options; the first one is the Hardware items option.
Using this option, you can define custom hardware
configuration lists that will be sent to the selected clients.
When queried, the selected client(s) will receive these custom
configuration lists you have defined. Please note that the
hardware items lists you define using this option will replace
the default configuration list of the selected client, which
will be able to add only the items you have specified to his
own Hardware configuration list.
Click on the Hardware items option to display the Hardware
items dialog box.
Q : What about the device types option?
A : In the General options dialog box, clicking on the Device Types option will display the Device Types dialog box. Here you can define custom device types, other than the default device type, which is computer. This option allows you to identify in the Network info panel the custom devices which may be present in your Local Area Network, such as Internet access devices, network equipments, network printers, etc. The device types you define here will appear in the small dropdown list in the Device types column in the Network info panel. Simply select the IP you're interested in, click on the small arrow and select the Device type you have just defined from the list. From now on, in the Network info panel, the selected client will be identified as the Device type you have defined.
Q : What are IP ranges? How can I define them?
A : An Internet address or IP address is a unique number
assigned to a certain computer, expressed as a 32-bit numeric
address usually written as four numbers separated by periods
(for example, 213.128.0.201). Each number can take values
between zero and 255. IP addresses consist of the network part
(usually, the first three groups of numbers) identifying the
network over the Internet, while the last group of numbers are
assigned to the local hosts, identifying specific hosts in a
network. Within a Local Area Network (or LAN) you can assign IP
addresses at random as long as each one is unique; usualy, the
addresses in a LAN begin with 192.168.xxx.xxx.
The IP Inventory™ Server identifies the devices in a
Local Area Network by their IP address. In order to scan the
network, the IP Inventory Server needs the starting and the
ending IP addresses defining the IP addresses interval you want
to scan. Click on the IP range button or double click anywhere
within the IP ranges panel to display the IP range dialog box;
simply enter the starting IP address (for example, 192.168.0.1)
and type in the last host number in the To field. Remember, you
can only enter values between 0 and 255. Click on the OK button
to validate the IP range you have just defined. When clicking
on the Net info button, the IP Inventory Server will scan all
IP addresses in the range you have defined.
Q : How does it work?
A : The IP Inventory application is made up by two separate
parts: IP Inventory™ Server and IP Inventory™ Client.
The client is a small application which must be installed on
each computer in the selected IP range in order to retrieve its
hardware and software configuration. The client application
also allows to manually define custom hardware configuration
lists, or add other hardware items to the configuration
(chairs, desks, fax machines, etc.). All configuration details
are sent to the IP Inventory™ Server, which manages all
configuration lists received from the network clients.
The IP Inventory™ Server checks the online presence of
the devices found in the selected IP range and queries them on
fixed time intervals in order to retrieve their configuration
data. The information received from clients is used to built
complex reports, showing practically all information available
on the selected clients: hardware and software configurations,
initial and replacement cost for each hardware item (as defined
by the client), details about other hardware items besides
those related to IT (chairs, desks, phones, fax machines, etc.
- these must also be defined by clients), and even warnings
about exceeding software licences.
Q : One more for reports. You need an extended
report that shows all machines with their machine brand,
computer name and serial number. We need something like that
for our insurance carrier and I don't see an easy way to do
it.
A : Ok, we will create
it with options and groupings I.E. By Location .
Also I am testing the beta that has the Detail Watchdog report
as well we added tabs to the Client Menu which drill down to
the Location/User
Q : I like the watchdog
function and have it currently set to search out people who
hoard MP3, Mov and AVI files on their computers but I don't see
a way to run this as a report and print it for tracking in HR.
It would also be nice if it included the file names and path on
a detailed report by machine and just the number of alerted
files on a general report.
A : I will add this to the todo List
Q : It would be nice if you
could right click on a device name or type and get a drop down
for reports and bypass the reports menu entirely. For example
if I know I always want to run a general report on machines
when I first release them to a user or to audit them, it would
be easier to right click and select General report instead of
clicking on Reports and then hitting the right radio button and
scrolling down through my list of computers to find the one I
want before I can create my report. I think this would make it
a much better product because if you have more than 10 machines
to take care of you have to scroll through the report list just
to find the right machine. It just seems like uneccessary
steps.
Q : Does anyone know when the release date is for the final build 1.2?
A : We will have another build Monday that Includes a GUI
for the Client Service as well as a client only install. If all
goes well we plan to release 1.2 on the 21th of this
month.
Q : I am missing the ability to
get harddrive information - about size and available space
...
This will be added in the Next release.
Q : Is is possible to add a field? I want to be able to enter an asset tag number.
Q : I have the IP Inventory client running on a Windows 2000 server. However, upon discovery in IP Inventory Server, it does not show any OS or hardware info for that machine. It does however show the installed applications. It's a Compaq Proliant 800 with 256MB Ram and Pentium Pro processor.
A : Please try the following :
1 - From IPI Server Right Click for the New menu and Ping then
Query that client Also Please set the Device type to
windows-computer as this is currently the only device that will
Query. (note this will be change in the next release 1.3 on
June 25 that will Include many nice Features like exporting to
XML, Serial numbers for clients, Beta Linux support and more...
)
A - Review that the ping and query was sucessful
2 - Review the Software and Hardware
If this solved the problem you are done otherwise
3 - On the Client side open the IPI Client GUI and see if the
hardware / software is Populated ?
4 - If you have any problems with any of the above please
confirm that the services is running (IPI Client Service
)
5 - Please Confirm Latest Version from the web site Client and
server
Last update was June 6 2004 for both
6 - Check that the Windows 2000 server has no firewall or that
port 5001 is open
7 - Last Choice
Sent us the ELF Files from both
Q : I have a handful of NT machines on the network. The NetInfo is not pulling the computer name properly. I get either a partial name or a series of letters and numbers that don't seem to match anything.
A : Please update to the latest Client Only downlaod on the IPI site and as well please send us the (ELF) files for the NT client and server.