Hardware Audit – Pc Audit Made Simple
As an IT Manager, you should always be prepared for an IT audit request. By being prepared for any kind of hardware auditing request, you are in a stronger negotiation position with manufacturers – when the threat of an IT audit is no longer menacing. Moreover, IT departments are frequently required to reconcile their physical inventory with an electronic inventory to meet various regulatory and financial requirements. This can be cumbersome, unless you have implemented an IT Asset Management tool that allows you to manage and audit your entire computer inventory easily.
Beyond the complexities of hardware audits, software asset management introduces even greater challenges — for example, auditing a hardware device for the software it contains, and the complexity of software recognition – mapping the many files found to licensed applications and units in the accounting system.
To perform an hardware audit you need to create a detailed computer inventory of all computer assets in your network, including a total hardware audit of PCs, servers, laptops, printers and other types of hardware devices. The network inventory also covers network printers, switches and other devices. Once you created a baseline, you need to have the tools and processes in place to update the inventory with any changes to your assets so it remains accurate and valuable. By automating the process, you will quickly see how it is a much more efficient and thorough process than the all-to-familiar headache of a manual hardware audit.
What properties do I need to audit?
You should keep track of the key hardware properties including RAM , Processors, Video and monitors, Sound cards, Local Drives, Network shares, PC shares, Printers, Modems and more. In addition, you need to keep track of all the software titles installed on each PC on your network. Audit events should keep track of any software that is installed and removed from your computers, user login events and changes to your hardware configuration (for example, when memory is added or disks are removed).
There are tools in the market that makes your audit job much easier by automating the audit process and keeping track of changes to your assets.
SAManage is a leading provider of on-demand IT Management software that makes it easy to audit your hardware and control your IT Assets. SAManage is a SaaS based system. You can finally forget about managing network audit software and start doing your auditing and discovery the on-demand way. SAManage can be easily deployed across multiple locations within minutes and provide visibility into complex IT infrastructures to ensure optimized IT asset utilization.
Visit http://www.samanage.com and sign up for a free account today.
on December 31, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Permalink
Just about any hardware will work fine, but I can give you some tips.
1. NVidia's been having some trouble lately, and AMD has been doing an amazing job with their Linux drivers. Even better, AMD's moving ATi to an open source model (they're just working out licensing) so I'd recommend an ATi video card. The latest drivers from AMD even support redirected rendering for 3D on a 3D surface (like the cube), and Ubuntu Lucid Lynx, due out in April of next year, will have DRI2 (again, redirected rendering) working on the open source Radeon driver.
2. Your biggest issue will be a printer. HP and Epson are both very well supported. For other brands, check before you buy. Personally, I love my Epson.
3. Wireless shouldn't be too much of a problem. Just find what chipset the wireless is using, and you should be OK. Ralink, Atheros, Intel, and Broadcom are the most common, and should work fine.
4. TV Tuners, IR receivers, and Bluetooth devices will be your odder ones to find. That said, it's about as difficult getting ones with good Windows support. If you are looking for one of those components, I'd recommend asking a specific question.
Good Luck, and have fun with Linux! I know I do every day, and the best part: It has so far run just fine on every computer I've stuck it on! Even the Bluetooth on this Netbook, and the RaLink wireless on my MSI, the weird Radeon with dual-DVI on my Dad's desktop, and the totally random WiFi card in my friend's desktop.
on December 31, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Permalink
you need a server….
probally multiple servers
your hardware would not be located at your house
it would be rented in a datacenter…
visit hostway for a better idea
but you still need the programming to run the engine not just the server
Paul
on December 31, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Permalink
hell yeah gators………………
on December 31, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Permalink
?????seen on CNN and NBC??
?Just click above?
GET FREE NEW IPHONE
?Just click above?
?????seen on CNN and NBC??
on January 2, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Permalink
i can’t believe you would be complaing about paying 500 bucks for an iphone its turns out to eb about $2000 with the contract and $1049 if you buy it outright 8gb. And this is now, I can’t imagine how much it would have been back when it first came out. And I think back then the australian dollar was about 91 us cents. Crazy
on January 3, 2009 at 8:58 am
Permalink
It's hard to explain this to someone who's had little experience with digital logic circuits. To fully understand this, you need to read up on logic gates, boolean algebra, CPU and bus architecture.
I'll try to keep it simple. The base language of a computer is machine code. The part of the computer that actually "understands" and executes machine code is the CPU.
Machine codes consist of numbers: opcodes and arguments. For example "254" is a x86 instruction meaning "decrease by 1".
The CPU itself consists of a complex network of logic gates (basic digital devices that combine and manipulate bits of data). When the CPU reads an opcode of 254, it sees it as a binary bit-pattern: 11111110. Each of those bits is sent down its own wire (bus) into a logic-gate network (instruction decoder) which is connected in such a way that an input of 254 would activate the "decrease by 1" mechanism; an input of, say, 14 would activate the "multiply by" mechanism, etc.
In short, the CPU is hardwired to respond to specific patterns of bits which we call machine code. If you ever take a digital circuit course, you will likely build a basic 4-bit CPU for your final project.