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How the Asset Management Agent Collects Software Inventory

The asset management agent uses different processes to collect the software inventory information depending on the method of scanning. Understanding this process helps you to troubleshoot the software inventory collection process and also schedule and configure software inventory at an interval that best suits your organization.

Heuristic Scanning

• At the scheduled time, the asset management agent scans the selected sources for the installed software on Windows agents. On Linux/UNIX, it searches the RPM, PKG, and PIF databases.

Signature Scanning

• At the scheduled time, the asset management agent scans the hard disk of the asset for the executable files and then matches the files with the signatures available in the database.

The agent performs the following actions for both the methods after collecting installed software information:

• Creates the amapp.dat file if it uses heuristic software inventory scan. This file contains the software detected by heuristic scanning. However, if it uses software signature scanning, it creates the amsoft.xml file. This file contains the software detected by signature scanning.
• Compares the results collected from both the scans with the previous scan results, and sends the delta values to the scalability server where delta values are stored in w## files.
• When the engine triggers the engine collect task, it collects all the files from the scalability server, processes them, and stores the content in the database. Once processed, the engine deletes the files from the scalability server's collect area.

Three objects are involved in this process - agent, inventory collect task, and engine collect task. Each of these objects has independent scheduling options. When the scheduling for any of these objects differs, you should consider the following:

• The execution of the inventory collect task depends on the agent's run.
• Inventory collect tasks have their own scheduling options. By default, tasks are scheduled to run always.
• The update to the database depends on the scheduling of the engine collect task. Conversely, the engine collect task also updates the information from the database to the scalability server: new or modified agent collection module configurations and job scheduling options. Software signatures for the Software Signature scans are also updated by the engine collect task.

The following example explains this scenario. The following scheduling options are specified for the three objects:

• Agent - Every one hour
• Inventory collect task - Always run Job
• Engine collect task - Once a day

In this case, the agent runs after every one hour and immediately executes the collect task. However, the engine can collect the information only once a day. So, the database is updated only once a day though the agent collects the information 24 times a day. Note that this is an undesirable scenario. To have an optimum implementation, you can schedule the collect task and engine collect task to execute at the same time. This ensures that all the collected data is updated in the database.

More information:

View the Discovered Software

Access the Collect Tasks Folder in the DSM Explorer

Check the Status of a Collect Task

Create, Configure, and Schedule Software Discovery Collect Task