Customizing Asset Management › Non Resident Inventory › Launching NRI Elective Inventory › Reported Information

Reported Information

Although the NRI agent uses the standard DSM agent components, there could potentially be less inventory reported by the NRI agent than by the DSM agent. The reason is that in some of the use cases mentioned above the NRI agent is likely to be executed by a user with a standard domain user account, and this will typically have less privilege than the Local System account (or optionally an administrator account) under which the regular DSM agent runs. Based upon the privileges under which it is being executed, the NRI agent collects as much information as it can.

The NRI agent uses three techniques to obtain the hardware inventory information:

• Calling standard Windows API functions
• Reading registry keys
• Installing and running a device driver to collect SMBIOS inventory data. The most detailed hardware inventory information is collected via this SMBIOS mechanism. Once the SMBIOS data is collected, the device driver is removed leaving no lasting impact on the configuration of the inventoried system. As installing a device driver requires privilege, the detailed SMBIOS data cannot be collected unless the NRI agent is run as a privileged user.
• The NRI agent collects three different memory values:
  • OS Reported Memory

    This value is equal to the amount of memory that is reported by the operating system to be available after devices such as video adapters have taken their share.

  • Physical Memory

    This value is equal to the memory mounted on the main board.

  • Total Memory

    This value equals the upper value of the two above values.

Note: Physical Memory is not reported if the NRI agent is executed in the context of a restricted user.

If the NRI agent is executed through a Remote Desktop connection, some values can be reported that are different to the actual values.

For heuristic-based software scanning, the NRI agent obtains details of the software installed by examining the:

• Windows MSI database to obtain details of installed MSI packages
• Windows Add/Remove Software list

For signature-based software scanning, the detection of installed software relies upon software content signatures being available to the NRI agent. As supplied, the NRI agent is shipped with the latest available content signatures; however, the DSM administrator can update this with newer content definitions by the simple replacement of a single signature content file.

If the NRI agent is executed by a restricted user, the amount of reported software inventory can vary from what is reported by a user with administrative rights. For heuristic software, only applications available to the user are reported. For a signature scan, some signatures can be prohibited from checking if an application is installed due to file access restrictions.

The default packages return a trust level of 5, if the user is an administrator. If the user is restricted, the trust level is returned as 3. During reporting on the collected inventory it is important to note the reported trust level.

If an asset has previously been inventoried by a full DSM agent, then the NRI inventory will overwrite that inventory if the inventory has been collected by an administrator (trust level 5). NRI inventory generated by a non- administrative user will not overwrite inventory that was collected by a DSM agent.

For a list of reported inventory information that can be expected, see List of Inventory Items Reported.