A few feature requests...
This is mainly for the Windows System version though you can apply it to the Linux versions as well as they require updates and upgrades. Windows has a management system to keep track of all the updates it has installed. Under the HKLM root is a registry key folder for updates installed on Windows. It would be great if Bixdata can generate a list of updates installed on each machine with an agent and feed it back to bixdesktop or server. This would be a great help to make sure machines are up to date with current updates. I just wish there was a way of making the desktop program or agent give you a warning when there is an update and it does not see it installed, but this is already asking for too much.
The other feature which I haven't seen and it is weird to me that it hasn't been incorporate is a detailed scorecard of your system configuration. Like CPU/Memory/Hard Disk/OS and so on, the agent is already collecting this info so why not have it in an easy to read format on a centralized cluster program like Bixdata. I don't know if you seen LANDesk from Intel, but this is somewhat similar.
One last feature, but now we are infiltrating in to uncharted waters and I think Microsoft would deem it a violation of their software is a way to track software keys. There are key recompiling programs out there that will give you the registration key for OS/Office 2k3 and other programs. This would be an easy way of keeping track of software licenses and having it in a centralize program like Bixdata would be great, but once again I don't know if there are complications with Microsoft on this as they are tight about reverse engineering their software.
Just a few thoughts.
Thanks,
Jesus
Showing installed updates or hotfixes is a great suggestion. We had a feature in version 1 that allowed you to see installed software, but this very useful. Its now on our list for a future 2.x release.
BixData Community edition already supports showing you the hard drive inventory on your servers (including version, model, manufacturer). Also CPU usage, disk size, disk free etc. This is found in Reports and Graphs.
Seeing more information about the OS, hard disk and anything else Agent collects involves 'rolling your own' in two steps.
Create a user tag with all the machine you want this information from and associate the machines with this tag. Run a report to display this information. The default reports that ship with the community edition shows CPU usage, hard disk space and memory. It can easily be modified to show other info. Reports are defined in XML and found in bixdata/bixserver/php/reports and graphsets.
We will make this information more accessible in future releases.
Software keys and other information fits into the above framework, and if we can collect it from the registry, or write a plugin for it, we'll add it so you can collect and report it.
Their all great suggestions, thanks!
Thanks for you comments on the suggestions. I'm glad you are implementing some of these in future releases.
As per the XML reports I did not know I could create my own. I should get into reading a little into XML code and learn and create tables and graphs that give me an overview of machines on the network. Thanks for the suggestion. I knew that Bixdata already collected all of this info, but had a hard time trying to make it somewhat viewable and easy to read. Now I know it can be done.
Thanks,
Jesus