Managing Inventory Servers
Alloy Inventory Server is a Windows service that runs various tasks in Alloy Discovery. The Inventory Server requires a significant amount of system resources. When your organization has more than 500 computers, we recommend that you install the Inventory Server on a dedicated computer separately from the Alloy Discovery database server.
NOTE: This does not mean that the server must be exclusively dedicated to the Inventory Server. For details on installing and configuring the Inventory Server, see Installation Guide: Configuring the Inventory Server.
The Inventory Server performs the following tasks:
- Discovering computers and network devices on the network according to the schedule or on demand. For details, see Discovering Network Nodes.
- Auditing computers, Chromebooks and devices on the network according to the schedule or on demand. For details, see Auditing Network Nodes On Demand.
- Checking Network Folder Audit Sources, FTP Audit Sources and E-mail Audit Sources for new snapshots with the upload interval or on demand. For details, see Checking Network Folder, Email, and FTP Audit Sources for New Snapshots.
- Loading audit snapshots from the portable media. For details, see Receiving Portable Audit Results.
Additionally, the Inventory Server performs various operations when processing received audit data, such as the following:
- Recognizing software products and populating the Software Catalog. For details, see Managing the Software Catalog.
- Tracking change history. For details, see Viewing the Change History.
- Sending out alert notifications. For details, seeConfiguring Alerts .
- Detecting and resolving audit conflicts. For details, see Conflict Policy.
- Logging all events in Alloy Discovery. For details, see Log Management.
Alloy Discovery supports multiple Inventory Server instances for a single Alloy Discovery database. When you configure a Site, you associate it with a particular Inventory Server instance, and that server performs all Inventory Server tasks for the Site. You can associate multiple Sites with a single Inventory Server instance.
INFO: For details, see Configuring Sites and Setting Up the Audit.
One of Alloy Discovery components is the Inventory Server Manager. You can use this tool to start, stop, and restart the Inventory Server, however this must be done from the computer where the Inventory Server is running. For instructions, see Starting and Stopping the Inventory Server.
In the Settings app, you can view the properties of all Inventory Server instances registered in your Alloy Discovery database and tune up their performance. For instructions, see Viewing Inventory Server Properties and Tuning Inventory Server Performance.
INFO: You can also manage the Inventory Server tasks. For instructions, see Managing the Task List.
