OCS Inventory explained

OCS Inventory
Programming Language:	Perl, PHP
Platform:	multi-platform (Unices, Windows, others)
Genre:	hardware inventory
License:	GNU General Public License^[1]
Website:	ocsinventory-ng.org

Open Computer and Software Inventory Next Generation (OCS inventory NG) is free software that enables users to inventory IT assets. OCS-NG collects information about the hardware and software of networked machines running the OCS client program ("OCS Inventory Agent"). OCS can visualize the inventory through a web interface. Furthermore, OCS includes the capability of deploying applications on computers according to search criteria. Agent-side IpDiscover makes it possible to discover the entirety of networked computers and devices.

History

The open-source OCS Inventory NG project started in late 2005 and produced its first release version of OCS Inventory in early 2007.^[2] Since version 1.0rc3, most of OCS Inventory functionality can be adapted or extended via a module system.

Operation

The dialogue between OCS client machines and the server depends on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The software formats data in XML. The management server uses Apache, MySQL and Perl. OCS runs on multiple platforms: under Unixes and under Microsoft Windows (95 or later). A web-interface written in PHP offers consultation of the inventory, user-rights management, and technical support features.

Agents

In order to collect detailed information, one can install agents on the client machines in the inventory. Developers have made client agents available for:

• Microsoft Windows
• Linux
• Mac OS X
• Sun Solaris
• IBM AIX
• FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
• HP-UX
• Android

Relation to other software

• OCS Inventory can be used to feed the manager of GLPI and thus offers part of an ITAM solution.
• Samanage is a cloud-based, commercial ITAM, that has used modified OCS-NG agent as a data source.

License

OCS Inventory consists of free software published under GNU GPL v2. The developers own the copyright.

External links

• The official site of OCS Inventory
• GLPI Project
• OCS and BPM

Notes and References

1. Web site: OCS Inventory NG - License guidelines . 2009-11-16 . 2010-07-27 . https://web.archive.org/web/20100727002613/http://www.ocsinventory-ng.org/index.php?page=license . dead .
2. Book: Antal. Barzan. IT Inventory and Resource Management with OCS Inventory NG 1.02. 13 May 2010. Packt Publishing Ltd. 2010. 9781849511117. 2015-02-16. OCS Inventory NG [...] is the name of an open source project that was started back in late 2005. The project matured into the first final release in the beginning of the year 2007..