Altiris Asset Management Suite

A highly modular and comprehensive solution for large enterprises to help them keep track of the minutest details of their IT infrastructure

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Most large enterprises today are facing the challenge of managing their IT infrastructure. The reason for this is simple-the growing complexity of the IT infrastructure. There are too many elements to manage, requiring an efficient way of handling them. The Altiris Asset Management Suite is one candidate for the job. There were a couple of things we liked about it. First, it's completely web-based, meaning there's no proprietary interface, and everything is done through a web browser. Second, it's very modular, so you can go for whatever solutions you need today, and add more as per the requirement, later. It first installs a Notification Server along with MS SQL Server Desktop Engine, which acts as the base. All modules are then added on top of this. Going further, the suite is broken up into three levels. The first level covers application metering and client inventory management. Second one comprises of asset control, contract management, and connector solutions to connect the suite with third party network management solutions like OpenView of SMS. Plus, there's a TCO management module as well. Lastly, the third level includes a helpdesk management solution. We checked out the first level. The arrangement of these levels has been done keeping in mind the most logical path an enterprise would take when implementing it. For instance, the first thing any IT manager would want to do is get a fix on all the hardware and software applications on his/her network. Therefore, the first level has Application Metering and Client inventory modules, and the logic follows suite for the remaining levels. 

The setup is pretty simple, but to get the whole thing up and running can take a while. It first installs the Notification Server, which checks whether all prerequisites are available, else it doesn't install. This is pretty efficient, and tells you what's missing in your server and where to get it from. For instance, some of the components it requires are IIS with ASP and the .NET Framework. The installation actually gives you instructions on how to install these components. Similarly, it also requires SQL Server, and if you don't have it installed, it downloads it from the Altiris website for you. Once installed, you can start the Altiris Console, and then install all the modules we talked about. In fact, if you have sufficient bandwidth, then you can install most of them online.

Most of the functionality provided by the solution is offered by installing agents on all clients on your network. The key one is the Altiris Agent, which does the assets and inventory management. All other agents are installed on top of that, e.g. the Application Metering Agent. You can even roll out agents remotely from one central location. This may sound simple, but actually it isn't, because you don't really know how various client machines have been configured.

What if the client has the firewall turned on for instance? Or the user has not logged into your Windows domain? Due to this, the client will not install at all. At one point of time, during the testing, we also came across a problem wherein a client was not able to download and install the Altiris Application Metering Agent from the Notification server.

The Altiris web management interface is divided into seven different tabs, making it fairly easy to navigate. While up front it appears to be a fairly simple interface, there's actually quite a bit of complexity packed inside those tabs. In fact, one would need proper training just to use the software, because there's so much functionality that's been added in. To take Application Metering alone, you start off by rolling out the agents to all the machines, and then configure it to tell you which applications are running on all the machines.

It has pre-configured options to detect commonly used applications such as MS Office, games, ICQ, Yahoo! and MSN Instant Messengers, and even P2P clients such as KazaA, Morpheus, and the like. You can further control the use of these applications and get detailed usage reports for each. Likewise, the inventory module gives you detailed reports about each machine on your network, and comprehensive reporting.

Bottom Line: There's a lot more to this solution than what we've discussed. In fact, it covers each and every aspect of all equipment in an enterprise IT infrastructure, including costs, contracts, and even non-IT infrastructure such as furniture and fixtures, cellphones, desk phones and other office equipment.

Anil Chopra

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