How Total Network Inventory Can Ease Your Life

If you work as a network administrator or you’re the leader of the IT department who needs to manage a large local network, think of using some software products to ease your work. For instance, you may try your luck with Total Network Inventory or TNI. It’s a network inventory software that is able to scan PCs on the network and prepare an informative report to reveal information about service packs, OS, hotfixes, software, hardware, running processes and other valuable information.

The information is stored in a central database which allows to generate custom reports that are easy to read and understand. The program also possesses such features as investigating via an IP range, agent-free operation and a scan wizard.

All in all, the program promises to be a great deal. Nevertheless, let’s see how it actually works in a real life.

How Does TNI Operate?

This management software is easy to install. You just start the setup file and determine where the data will be stored. For instance, you may place the database on a desktop or store it on a server.

The installation process doesn’t take much time, and you can start scanning nearly immediately because you don’t need to install agents on the remote devices.

You may even choose the machines you want to scan: you just select IP networks, or Windows networks (for Windows Workgroup), or choose individual computers and containers. The choice can be saved, and the scanning process with the same data can be repeated a little bit later.

Remember that scanning requires authorization, so it’s necessary to supply the credentials used to log in remotely. Windows machines may also use the current user as default login, while SSH and SNMP logins require credentials to be specified in the Edit tab.

You may alter scanner settings in a multitude of ways. For instance, you may choose not to investigate particular assets or choose which port scanning, network discovery and ping methods should be used.

The scanning process is done on various devices, but the data about each machine is revealed separately.

What Do TNI Tabs Mean?

If you plan to use TNI software, get ready to work with a number of tabs to understand how your network actually operates. So you need to take into consideration the following tabs:

• Scanner;
• Viewer & reports;
• Table reports;
• Software accounting;
• Change log.

1.      Viewer & Reports

The purpose of this tab is to reveal the inventory information. For instance, when using the Group summary option, you may see the number of virtual and physical assets your network is comprised of. You may also find the freshest data about which computers need Windows or antivirus updates there.

All in all, the network inventory information is divided into the following sections:

• Software;
• Hardware;

The Software section contains all information about installed programs, hotfixes and security-related data. While using this option, you may see what database engines and codecs are used inside your network.

The Hardware section reveals the data that the Windows Device Manager provides.

The Other section gives you the latest news about the users, network shares and other environment variables.

2.      Table Reports

If you need to find information about many different attributes from many computers, the Table reports tab is the place to look. Information will be delivered in the form of special table reports compiled from predefined report templates.

You may also create your own custom report templates with the help of the Report Constructor: you just select a particular object of focus and TNI will display the available data for this object.

The network inventory data reports may be exported as HTML files, CSV, Excel spreadsheet or printable PDF, ODT or RTF.

3.      Software Accounting

This tab was designed for managing software licenses. TNI software is able to sort all programs and reveal the number of copies of all applications that run inside your network and the computers on which they were installed.

To make software accounting a pleasant job, you may assign tags and stars to applications and let the TNI’s filter show only these selected programs. While using this tab, you can also track the presence and absence of particular software on the computers in your network and find the ones that lack essential programs.

TNI designed by Softinventive Lab  is able to investigate and reveal detailed information about devices that make up a local network. When you start to run this program, you don’t simply get general information about the number of computers that are connected with each other. You get information about configuration, installed software and license data on each machine.

I wholeheartedly advise you to use this program software in managing your local network.