The first of our best practice series on IT Asset Management will show you how to build your inventory using multiple discovery sources. The goal is to identify what and where your assets are, so that you can classify them and gain better visibility. You need to discover and track every asset in your organization. Let’s look at a three-step approach to do this.
The first step is to discover the assets in your home network. You can use the Windows domain or network scan, depending on the types of devices you are looking to discover and track. If your assets are scattered across multiple sites, use the distributed asset scan to get the information you need.
Types of devices that can be scanned using Windows domain and network scans
Windows domain scan
- Windows devices
Network scan
- Linux, Solaris
- Mac, AIX
- VMHost machines
- Printers
- Routers & Switches
The second step is to discover assets outside your home network. This is where agent-based scans come in handy. You need to deploy agents on your workstations to scan the machine information and send the information back to your central server. On subsequent scans, the agent scans your assets for changes and sends out only the differential data to the ServiceDesk Plus database, reducing the burden on the ServiceDesk Plus server and your network.
The third step is to ensure that your mobile assets are tracked as well. Initially, you may not have a Bring Your Own Device policy in place, but you can always start by asking users to register their personal devices for MDM tracking. These personal devices are on and off the home network, and therefore require dynamic discovery techniques. An advantage of using MDM is that it reduces the adverse effects of shadow IT.
There is always a dilemma between choosing agent-based and agentless discovery techniques. It is advisable to use a combination of both to achieve the best results.
The agent-based discovery technique
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Gives you precise and comprehensive detail of your assets
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Can be used to scan devices that are mobile and outside your home network
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Requires minimal infrastructure to perform scans and leaves minimal footprint on the scanned asset
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Can be used to selectively scan individual workstations that have undergone a change
The agentless discovery technique
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Is a lightweight, non-invasive method because authentication is not required
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Requires minimal implementation time
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Incurs no extra cost for installation, maintenance, or upgrades
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Requires all devices to be on the network and switched on
It is important that you know everything about your assets. You need to capture as many asset parameters as possible because detailed asset information will help you drive critical decisions later. Here are some basic hardware and software parameters that you should track.
Hardware asset parameters
- Configuration item type
- Current state of the asset
- Cost of acquiring Name of the vendor
- Warranty expiration date
Software asset parameters
- Version number of the software
- Number of installations of the software
- Name of the manufacturer
- Category and sub-category the asset falls under
To access assets easily, without tedious searching, you need to classify them under three sections, as depicted below.
Hardware assets
- Servers
- Workstations
- Printers
- Scanners
- Router
- Smart phones
- Tablets
- VM and VM hosts
Asset components
- Keyboard
- Mouse
- Webcam
- Projectors
Software assets
- Software
- Software licenses and
- Service packs
If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below. In the next blog, you can learn how to track the complete life cycle of assets. In the meanwhile, if you are looking for an out of the box IT service desk solution with built-in ITAM capabilities, we encourage you to check out ServiceDesk Plus.
