Understanding the Inventory Scanning Cycle in the Standalone Scenario

The following illustration depicts the scanning components and the inventory scanning cycle in the standalone scenario, which is explained below:

The inventory scanning cycle is as follows:

1. The inventory policies in the eDirectory define the inventory settings, such as the Inventory Service object name of the Inventory server to which the scan data will be sent, scanning time, whether to include software scanning of inventoried servers, and the software rules for software scan. These settings are customizable.
2. The Scanner uses Policy and Distribution Services to read the inventory policies and collects the inventory information based on the policy settings.
3. The Scanner stores the scan data (.STR) locally on the inventoried server. This data is transferred to the Inventory server using the XML-RPC protocol.
4. The Scan Collector receives the .STR file using the XML-RPC protocol and stores the STR file in the scan directory (SCANDIR) at the Inventory server. The Scan Collector uses the ZEN Web Server to process the XML-RPC requests.
5. The Selector validates the .STR file and places the file in the Database directory (DBDIR).
6. The Storer updates the database with the inventory information of the .STR file.
7. The network administrator views the inventory information and queries the database in ConsoleOne.