need to do a domain inventory, but can't afford SMS

[Gerry Voras]

I am going to inherit very soon a 250+ workstation AD domain. One of the
1st things I'm going to need to do is accomplish a hardware and software
inventory of all the equipment. However, my budget request for SMS (which
I'm used to) was denied. I've compiled a bunch of SMS, DMI, and SNP trap
tools over the years -- so my questions are:

1) any freeware tools available that I can use to take advantage of my
existing stuff?
2) any other tools I should be considering instead (free or low cost?)

Thanks!

 

[Torgeir Bakken (MVP)]

I am going to inherit very soon a 250+ workstation AD domain. One of the
1st things I'm going to need to do is accomplish a hardware and software
inventory of all the equipment. However, my budget request for SMS (which
I'm used to) was denied. I've compiled a bunch of SMS, DMI, and SNP trap
tools over the years -- so my questions are:

1) any freeware tools available that I can use to take advantage of my
existing stuff?
2) any other tools I should be considering instead (free or low cost?)

Thanks!

Hi

For inventory to a csv file using WMI from vbscript (WMI comes default with
WinME, Win2k and WinXP), in the quickFIND field, search for:

poor mans sms

at Win32 Scripting [Clarence Washington]
http://cwashington.netreach.net

for a good example of this written by Steve Pyatt that you can use as a start
point.

Here is another one:

Using WMI for Inventory Management
http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/1475601

"A WSH script using VBScript is explained. The script uses
WMI to query a computer for some predetermined information.
The acquired information is written to a database using ADO."


The free AIDA32 is also an option.

http://www.aida32.hu/aida32.php

It can do automatic audit (e.g. using a logon script) via command-line
switches and save results to a file in various formats like HTML, CSV
or XML, or put it in a database (it has ADO/ODBC database support)

5.1 Command-line Mode
http://www.aida32.hu/proguide/en/proguide.htm#commandline_mode

AIDA32 network audit in practice
http://www.aida32.hu/aida-articles.php?n=002&lang=en

Using SQL databases for AIDA32.
http://www.aida32.hu/aida-articles.php?n=003&lang=en