Configuration
The configuration files of the Inventory Server and the Snow Inventory Agents are based on the XML standard format.
Site name configuration
A site name is a configuration element, often referred to as SiteName, used across all the technologies related to Snow Inventory and also in Snow License Manager and SAM Core on Snow Atlas. It usually refers to the physical location, cost center, department, or organizational position of the inventoried computer or device.
The site name is used in the configurations of Snow Inventory Server, Snow Inventory Agent, and Snow Integration Manager, and is then inherited by Snow License Manager or SAM Core on Snow Atlas, which can apply some business logic to it, usually to assign the computer or device to an organization.
Supported characters in site name configurations are the letters A-Z, a-z, the numbers 0-9, and the special character '.' (period). Other characters might generate issues in the processing of data.
Site names are processed without regard to capitalization of letters. For example, SITENAME and sitename are considered the same.
Server configuration
The Snow Inventory Server Configuration Manager provides an administrative interface for the configuration and installation of the Inventory Server.
Considering the scalability and load-balancing aspects, the Inventory Server can be configured as a Master Server or a Service Gateway. Service Gateways forward all their data and requests to a Master Server for further processing, either directly or via another Service Gateway.
Snow Inventory Server can be configured to receive incoming requests both on HTTP and HTTPS protocols as per solution requirements.
The Snow Inventory Admin Console provides an overview of configuration settings, Server Endpoints, and Discovery interfaces for any configured Master Server or Service Gateway. The features like Active Directory (AD) Discovery and Network Discovery can be enabled/disabled and configured via the Admin Console.
Agent configuration
Snow Inventory Agents are available on Unix, Linux, macOS, and Windows as supported platforms. The agent configuration definition is platform-independent.
Centralized management
Agent configuration for all supported platforms is managed via Snow Inventory Admin Console. When an agent configuration has been changed and after confirmation by the user, the update is distributed to all targeted computers and applied automatically.
Scheduling
The Snow Inventory Agent for Windows runs as a service on the computer and can be configured to perform scheduled inventory scans on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, or at startup or logon actions. The Snow Inventory Agents for Linux, macOS, and Unix are scheduled using the built-in native scheduling functionality of the operating system, e.g. Cron.
Tuning the scan result
The Snow Inventory Agent configuration provides the possibility to fine-tune the scan result through a number of configuration options. Using the software settings configuration, one can include or exclude variables to tune the scan behavior, like directory path (include/exclude), file system (include/exclude), and file types (include). These various configuration options of the agent help to gather the desired data in an easy manner.
The scan behavior of the Snow Inventory Agent can be further fine-tuned using system settings. It provides a number of options to be enabled or disabled, including setting up environment variables, HTTP settings, privacy settings, software metering, and hardware and software scans, as per scan requirements.
For more details, see Configuration of Snow Inventory Agents.
Inventory scan reporting
The Snow Inventory Agents support sending the inventory result file to multiple Inventory Servers, directly or via proxy, in a fallback manner. If sending the result file to the primary Inventory Server fails, then the agent tries the next server in sequence.
Drop location
For customers that want to keep a copy of the scan result, the Snow Inventory Agent provides the drop location option. Every time an agent scans and sends the result file to a server, it will also copy the result file to a defined drop location folder. A drop location can be a UNC network location, a directory on a file system, or a web endpoint (directly or via proxy).
Oracle environments
The scanning of Oracle environments is performed using the Snow Inventory Oracle Scanner (SIOS) plug-in. The Oracle settings in the Snow Inventory Agent configuration include default credentials, and the possibility to include or exclude instances by using SID.