About Inventory

Inventory is the site-scoped catalog of every device that AlloyScan has discovered or audited, organized into a hierarchy that mirrors the technologies it covers — physical computers, hypervisors and the virtual machines they host, SNMP-managed network gear, and cloud resources from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. It is where you go to inspect the current state of a device, review its audit history, apply tags, assign an audit schedule, or hand off to a remote-administration tool.

How Inventory works

Inventory is built up by two collection paths that feed the same data model. Agentless audits originate from an Audit Service inside your network, which scans a Segment and then performs a deeper Audit on each reachable target. Agent-based audits originate from an Audit Agent installed on the endpoint, which pushes data outbound over HTTPS. Both paths produce Audit Snapshots — JSON records that capture a device's hardware, software, and configuration at a point in time. Each new snapshot carries a unique Audit ID, an Audit date, and an Audit source identifying the Service or Agent that produced it.

Devices land in Inventory after their first successful audit. From that point each device has a 4-tab form — General, Details, Audit, and Change history (with Printer supplies replacing Details on SNMP printers). The Details tab is a deep tree organized into six categories — Hardware, Network, Overview, Peripherals, Software, and User — with around eighteen sub-forms exposing the captured attributes.

Inventory is not a flat list. The landing page provides preconfigured groups for common asset types and lets you create additional groups or custom views when you need a different operational slice. It groups devices by section (Devices / AWS / Azure / Google) and by type within each section, so administrators can navigate from a broad "All devices" view down to a specific subtype like Windows computers or VMware ESXi hosts.

After a device is added to Inventory, you can assign a regular audit schedule to keep its record current. Inventory also connects to alerts and reports: you can subscribe to notifications for important events and use Reports to produce operational views of audited assets.

Device detail tabs

The information shown on the device form depends on the asset type.

General shows basic identity and network information. For computers, this includes operating system, manufacturer, hardware summary, network names, addresses, MAC addresses, uptime, and time zone details. For SNMP devices, it shows SNMP-reported identity such as manufacturer, model, serial number, uptime, contact, location, and object ID. For cloud resources, it shows provider-reported identifiers, state, resource type, addresses, hostnames, platform, and related attributes.
Details appears for computers and audited resources. It organizes collected data into Hardware, Network, Overview, Peripherals, Software, and User categories.
Printer Supplies replaces Details for printers and focuses on consumables and maintenance-related information. Other network device types may replace Details with a device-specific tab.
Network Interfaces appears for switches. It shows switch ports and connected devices in a table, and can also be viewed as a visual network map.
Audit shows the device type, last-seen information, audit status, audit log, assigned audit schedule, and debug options such as Data and Raw data.
Change history shows tracked configuration changes between audits when Change tracking is enabled.

How audit data flows in

A device's record is updated each time a new audit snapshot arrives. When new audit data is unavailable for a particular attribute, AlloyScan retains the previous value rather than blanking it — this prevents transient collection failures from erasing known state. Snapshots accumulate over time, identified by their Audit ID, and can be downloaded for forensic inspection from the device's Audit tab using the Data and Raw data buttons. Optionally, snapshots are offloaded to an external S3-compatible bucket configured at the site level.

Change tracking is a separate, opt-in mechanism layered on top of audit ingest. When enabled at the site level, AlloyScan compares each new snapshot against the previous one and writes a Change Event for every tracked attribute that changed. These events feed both the per-device Change history tab and the site-wide Change log. Change tracking is OFF by default, so a device's Change history tab will read empty on a fresh site until tracking is turned on and at least two audits have run.

Why this design

Separating the inventory record from the snapshot stream lets AlloyScan present a single up-to-date device row while preserving the full historical record. Separating change tracking from audit ingest keeps the audit pipeline efficient when historical comparison isn't needed, and gives administrators control over retention (6 months to 5 years) and which attribute categories are worth recording.

Key distinctions

Scan vs Audit. Scan discovers devices and produces basic identification (NetBIOS / DNS / MAC / IP / OS). Audit collects detailed hardware, software, and configuration on a selected device and consumes monthly audit quota. Only audited devices appear in Inventory.
Audit Service vs Audit Agent. A Service performs agentless audits from inside the network; an Agent runs on the endpoint and pushes data over HTTPS. Both populate the same Inventory.
Inventory record vs Audit snapshot. The Inventory record is the current-state view of a device; snapshots are the immutable history.
Tags vs Custom audit fields. Tags are simple labels for grouping and filtering. Custom audit fields capture typed values collected during audit (via SNMP OID, PowerShell script, or manual entry).

Limitations

Manual device add is not available. Devices appear in Inventory only after they are discovered and audited.
Inventory grids are capped at 1,000 records by default; use Load all sparingly.
Devices may appear as near-duplicate rows when the de-duplication algorithm cannot uniquely match a new snapshot to an existing record. See Troubleshooting.
The Inventory tile-based layout is selectable per grid; current documentation focuses on grid layout.