Products & Services

System Snapshot Manager (SSM)

Product Overview

System Snapshot Manager is an application designed for network administrators and IT managers
in big setups to track hardware and software used in their networks. It inventories hardware and software
installed on machines. It uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) APIs access detailed information
about the hardware and software. It allows organizations to collect from geographically varied locations.
Nobody has to visit the machines physically collect the data.

The product consists of two components.

1. First one is a service that collects information about hardware and software installed on client machine
   and posts it to central database server. This service can be configured to run on predefined intervals
   like everyday or every week etc. This runs without user’s intervention. This component makes use of WMI
2. 2. Second one is a web application. This web application is to visualize the data collected by service
   from the client machines. It consists of various reports and charts to understand the distribution
   of hardware across domains, locations, departments and usage of software by users.
   It uses AJAX to increase responsiveness.

Challenges

Knowledge of Hardware

Network Administrators and IT Manager need to know kind of hardware being used by a user
and configuration of the machine. They should be able to know the number of hard disks installed
on the system, partitions created and free space available. They should get information
about the physical memory installed and so about network interfaces, processor, motherboard etc.

Knowledge of Software Installed

Many times users do not adheres to the corporate policy towards installation of software and install unlicensed or unapproved software. Licensing is also an issue. It is necessary to keep track of how many licenses were
brought and how many has been exhausted. Network Administrators and IT Managers need clear details
which system has given software installed and which are running what operating system.

Keeping Tracks of Updates to Windows

Some times not all systems receive critical updates to Operating System and patches and hotfixes for software. Administrators and IT Managers should be able to view the systems where any patch or update
is installed or not installed.

Solutions

Knowledge of Hardware

SSM client application uses WMI classes and objects to collect information about the following components
like Motherboard, Bios, Disk Drives, Logical Disks, Network Adapters, Operating Systems, Physical Memory
Printers, and Processors etc.

Administrators can view all the details about a machine by simply selecting it in the list in web page.

This page display summary report about the machine, from list of displayed machines in list on left.
Complete details can be viewed by clicking on “All Info” button. The ‘All Info” page looks like this:

Also to visualize the data graphically graphs and pie charts are also available. Data about installed capacity
of hard disks, rams, number of machines etc. can be visualized graphically.

Knowledge of Software Installed

SSM update the central database about the software installed on users’ machines. IT Managers
can view all the software installed on any machine. Information about when software was installed
and when it is uninstalled is easily accessible to the administrators. Administrator can query
for the machines which has particular software installed or not installed. This way they can see
if any machines are missing some critical piece of software.

It also helps keep count of licenses. Administrator can enter purchase information about software
like date of purchase, number of licenses, available licenses etc.

Keeping Track of Updates to Windows

SSM keeps tracks of updates for windows products, also known as HotFixes or patches.
IT Administrators can view list of installed patches on a machine and can determine if machine
is properly secure and up-to-date. If only a few machines are un-patched in your network all your security
measures comes to a naught.