ZENworks 7 Desktop Management uses the Scanner to collect hardware and software information from Windows inventoried workstations.
The Scanner collects hardware details such as: floppy disk drive, hard disk drive, BIOS, bus, mouse, keyboard, display adapters, network adapter cards, modems, Jaz drives, Zip drives, sound cards, memory cards, serial ports, parallel ports, processors, and modems. The software scanning includes checking for applications on the inventoried workstations and reporting the information about the scanned software, such as the vendor name, the product name and version, etc.
The following sections contain detailed information about the Inventory Scanners:
You can customize the hardware and the software information to be scanned. For more information, see Section 76.2, Customizing the Hardware Inventory Information To Be Scanned and Section 76.3, Customizing the Software Inventory Information To Be Scanned For ZENworks 7 Inventoried Workstations.
The Workstation Inventory policy lets you configure the Scheduler to adjust scanning times at the inventoried workstations. You can set different actions to run the scanners on one or more inventoried workstations.
The Inventory scanner checks whether an updated dictionary is available at its Inventory server and downloads the updated dictionary.
The scanner scans for the hardware and software information.
The scan information collected by the scanners is stored as scan data files (.str). The files are sent to the Inventory server.
You can perform the following types of scans:
Full Scan: The Scanner enforces a complete scanning of the inventoried workstation. This setting overrides the option set in the Inventory Service Object property page associated with the inventoried workstation. When scanning the inventoried workstation for the first time, the Scanner collects the complete hardware and software inventory of the inventoried workstation.
Delta Scan: After the inventoried workstation is scanned, on subsequent scans, the Scanner compares the current inventory information to the history data that it maintains. If there are any changes to the inventoried workstation, the Scanner reports the delta scan data, which contains only the changes in inventory since the last scan was reported. The Delta Scan setting is the default scan operation for each successive scan after the first scanning of the inventoried workstation.
Scheduled Full Scan: After a specified number of delta scans, the Scanner enforces a full scan of the inventoried workstations, associated with the Workstation Inventory policy. The Scheduled Full scan can contain full and delta inventory information based on the Workstation Inventory policy settings. By default, one Scheduled full scan happens after every five delta scans.
Following are the sources on the inventoried workstations from where the hardware inventory information is scanned:
For more information about the hardware information collected by the Inventory scanner, see Section N.0, Hardware Information Collected by the Inventory Scanners.
The scanners for scanning the inventoried workstations (Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows XP) also include scanning based on the industry-standard Desktop Management Interface (DMI) specification 2.0. These programs use the Management Interface (MI) of DMI to look for the hardware components installed on the inventoried workstation. The scanners scan for specific components that are instrumented on the inventoried workstation through DMI. The scanners query the DMI service layer to retrieve this information.
The MI allows the DMI-compliant scanners to probe the Service Provider within the Service Layer. The Service Provider collects information from the manageable components and stores the collected information in the Management Information Format database. The Component Interface (CI) communicates with the manageable components and the Service layer. The following figure shows the scanner interaction with DMI.
For more information on DMI standards, see the DMTF Web site.
NOTE:If the inventoried workstations are DMI compliant and if the Enable DMI Scan check box is selected in the Workstation Inventory policy, the scanners collect hardware information by querying the DMI Service Layer. Otherwise, the scanners probe for the hardware.
We recommend that you instrument DMI and also install DMI components that are supplied by the vendors.
For example, if you have a Compaq* Family Deskpro* EN Model-SFF6500 workstation running under Windows 98, download the Management Product software - Compaq Insight Management Desktop Agents software for Windows 98 from the Compaq Web site.
For Dell* workstations, access the DM/Desktop Management Utilities software from the Dell Web site.
The scanners collect hardware information from Windows inventoried workstations based on Microsoft Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) specification.
WMI is the Microsoft implementation of Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) that enables accessing management information in an enterprise environment. WMI 1.5 is fully compliant with Common Information Model (CIM) schema, which is an industry standard. For more information, see Microsoft WMI Web site. WMI also works with existing management standards, such as DMI and SNMP.
The scanners use WMI to look for the hardware components installed on the inventoried workstation. The scanners also scan for specific components that are instrumented on the inventoried workstation through WMI.
WMI-compliant scanners are supported on Windows 98, Windows XP, and Windows 2000 inventoried workstations only.
You can view the WMI information of the inventoried workstations in the Workstation Inventory.
To obtain WMI information from the inventoried workstation, you must first download Microsoft's Windows Management Instrumentation - Core Software Installation from Microsoft WMI Web site, and then install WMI Core Software on Windows 98 workstations
IMPORTANT:Only the WMI Core Software Installation download is required to instrument an inventoried workstation for WMI. To troubleshoot any WMI related problems, you can use the WMI SDK download. Also, on Windows 2000/XP workstations, the WMI Core Software is already installed.
By default, both DMI and WMI scanning are enabled. To disable either DMI or WMI scanning, deselect the or check box in the Inventory policy window.
Probe is a special built-in algorithm in the Inventory scanner, which is used to collect hardware information.
The Inventory scanner scans for the following software inventory information on the Windows inventoried workstations:
The scanner collects software information from the following sources on the inventoried workstation:
MSI: Includes software that is installed on the inventoried workstations using the Microsoft Installer.
Add-Remove Programs: Includes software that is listed in the Add/Remove Programs window.
Dictionary-based scan: Includes software that is collected based on the software dictionary rules. For more information, see Section 76.3, Customizing the Software Inventory Information To Be Scanned For ZENworks 7 Inventoried Workstations.
Probe: Probe is a special built-in algorithm in the Inventory scanner. It is used to collect software information about Windows operating system, Internet Explorer, Media Player, Outlook* Express, Microsoft Office and its installed components, Novell Client™ and its installed components, and the ZENworks suite and its installed components.
The following table shows the software information collected by the scanner from the various sources:
Table 74-2 Software Information collected by the Inventory Scanner
|
Scanned Attributes |
MSI |
Add/Remove Programs |
Dictionary-based scan |
Probe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Product Name |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Vendor Name |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Product Version |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Product Identifier |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Product Install Location |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Category |
No |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Description |
No |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Help Link |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
MSI Package GUID |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Display/Internal Version |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Language |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
UnInstall String |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Installation Source |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Display Name |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Support Pack |
No |
No |
No |
Yes |
|
Product Edition |
No |
No |
No |
Yes |
|
Last Execution Time |
No |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Usage Count |
No |
Yes |
No |
No |
The scanner collects the total disk usage information for the file extensions that are configured in the Software Dictionary editor. For more information, see Section 76.3, Customizing the Software Inventory Information To Be Scanned For ZENworks 7 Inventoried Workstations.
The scanner reports certain information for the files that match with the dictionary entries, and the files that belong to the unidentified software list, which is configured using the software dictionary rules. For more information, see Section 76.3.10, Configuring the Software Dictionary Rules
The scanner reports the following file attributes: FileName, FileSize, LastModifiedTime, InternalName, FileVersion, ProductName, ProductVersion, CompanyName, Language, DirectoryPath, and SoftwareDictionaryID.
The scanner collects information about the latest virus definition date and version that is installed on the inventoried workstations for the following product versions:
Table 74-3 Location and brief description of the Inventory Scanner log files
|
Filename |
Location |
Description |
|---|---|---|
|
inventory.xml |
windows_installation_drive/zenworks |
Contains complete hardware and software information after the scan. |
|
inventorydata.xml |
windows_installation_drive/zenworks |
Contains delta scan information. |
|
zenerrors.log |
windows_installation_drive/zenworks |
Contains the error and status information for the latest scan of the inventoried workstation. |