Product edition and version discovery

You often need edition and version data for products when purchasing upgrades or calculating license usage, yet this information isn't always part of device inventory. The solution is to use both a Discovery Services scan configuration and a Data Translation Services (DTS) rule to gather edition and version data that's not attainable with a normal network scan and add that information into inventory.

Future releases of Data Analytics will continue to update the list of products that you can configure edition and version discovery for.

Edition and version discovery for Microsoft Exchange, Oracle Weblogic, and Scooter Software Beyond Compare

For some products, edition and/or version information doesn't display by default in a device's inventory. These products often install with a text file that contains the edition and/or version information you need, but getting that data into inventory is a challenge.

The solution for obtaining this information is to define a Discovery Services scan configuration that also runs a DTS rule. The configuration scans all devices selected, and if it can connect, pulls the text file into the Computer.Software.Configuration Files.File component of the devices’ inventory. At that point, the DTS rule searches the file and adds the version and/or edition data to the Computer.Software.Additional Detection attribute.

The critical components for defining such a configuration are already available in Discovery Services, and the DTS rule needed for each product installs by default with Data Analytics.

  1. Go to the Discovery Services > Addresses folder, right-click All Addresses, and select Add Address to configure an address object that will run discovery on devices installed with Microsoft Exchange, Oracle Weblogic, or Scooter Software Beyond Compare.
  2. Right-click the Logins folder and select Add Windows Login to create an object that will connect to your devices via WMI to read the registry. Create as many login objects as needed. These logins need administrator access to the devices.
  3. Open the WMI > All WMI classes folder and click the Files WMI class. In the right pane, you’ll see an entry for each product. Double-click a product to view its defined WMI file rule (for example, Microsoft Exchange). Notice that the rule is set up to search for the listed filename on all drives and paths and to add the text file to the Computer.Software.Configuration Files.File component in inventory. Also shown is data about the text file that will appear in inventory. You can edit any of these options as necessary. The DTS group specified will run a rule that is configured to pull this product's version or edition information from the text file into inventory.



    Note: To change the information that the DTS rule will pull into inventory, you must first copy and edit the rule in DTS, and then select it here to run. By default, these rules are located in the DTS > System groups > Asset Control > WMI folder.
  4. Right-click the Configuration folder and select Add Config.
  5. Give the configuration a name, select Use WMI, and follow the prompts for selecting an address and login.
  6. In the WMI groups dialog, delete Full Scan from the list and click the Add button. Select the correct group to gather only the information you want.
  7. Finish creating the configuration and run it.

The Discovery Services scan may take a while to complete. To verify that the process succeeded, you can view the log file at C:\Program Files (x86)\LANDesk\ManagementSuite\MP_Log. The filename will appear as Discovery - <configuration name> - <date><time>.log.

Edition discovery for Microsoft SQL Server

You use a Discovery Services scan configuration to pull these text files into inventory, and then use a DTS rule to identify the edition and/or version information and add it to the inventory database. For example, the .product.properties file that installs with Oracle Weblogic contains the correct version of Weblogic installed on your devices.

One product that's challenging to license properly is Microsoft SQL Server. When you install SQL Server on any of your network servers, it creates the same Programs entries or registry values regardless of edition. The same executable files are run whether you install Enterprise, Standard, Developer, or Express, so querying off the inventory database is nearly impossible when you want to determine the edition of SQL Server to purchase.

The one place in the registry where the current edition of SQL Server is stored is in the instance description. The problem here is that the registry key to search for is tied to the instance name. You don’t have a good way of knowing what the exact key will be ahead of time, so you can’t configure the inventory scanner to scan for it.

The solution is to create a scan configuration in Discovery Services that gathers this information, which then enables the licensed-software rules in Data Translation Services to correctly assign the edition of SQL Server being used.

You must have administrator access to the SQL Server devices you're configuring discovery for.

  1. Go to the Discovery Services > Addresses folder, right-click All Addresses, and select Add Address to configure an address object that will run discovery only on devices running SQL Server.
  2. Give the address object a name.
  3. Select Management Suite Query as the type of address. From the drop-down list, select All SQL Server Machines, which is a prebuilt query that installed with Discovery Services. Click the OK button.
  4. Right-click the Logins folder and select Add Windows Login to create an object that will connect to your SQL Servers via WMI to read the registry. Create as many login objects as needed. These logins need administrator access to the SQL servers. Click the OK button.
  5. Right-click the Configuration folder and select Add Config.
  6. Give the configuration a name, select Use WMI, and click the Next button.
  7. Select where this configuration will be stored. Click the Next button.
  8. Click the Add button to select the address created above, and then click the Next button.
  9. Click the Add button to select the logins created above, and then click the Next button.
  10. In the WMI groups dialog, delete Full Scan from the list and click the Add button. Select the SQL Server Instances group to gather only the SQL Server instance information, not all of the information of a full scan. Click the Next button.
  11. Finish creating the configuration and run it.

The configuration will scan all devices in the query, and if it can connect, pull back the instance information (stored under the Computer.Managed Planet.SQL Instances class in inventory).

The Data Translation Services licensed-software rules will then use the Edition attribute to determine the SQL Server installation type. The software-manager service runs these rules nightly. To keep the data current, it's good practice to schedule this configuration to run periodically.