Introduction

Open-AudIT Enterprise 1.5.1 now introduces the ability to schedule certain types of repetitive tasks. 

Open-AudIT Enterprise has a gui tool to enable the scheduling of Subnet Discovery, Active Directory Discovery, Emailed Reports, Updating Groups and Running Baselines.

Scheduled Tasks use 'schtasks' under Windows and 'cron' under Linux.

NOTE - Microsoft has removed the 'at' functionality under Windows 2012 and later. We are currently working through a change to our code to re-enable Scheduled Tasks under Windows 2012 (and later).

Windows tasks can be enumerated using a command prompt and typing 'at'. Fixed as at Open-AudIT 1.8.4.

Linux jobs can be enumerated by using a shell and running 'less /etc/cron.d/oae'.

Listing Tasks

All scheduled tasks are listed in the configuration section of Open-AudIT Enterprise (menu -> System -> Setup Scheduled Tasks). From this screen you can add, remove and edit scheduled tasks.

Scheduling

All tasks can be scheduled the same in Windows and Linux.

You should first choose a schedule type.

Weekly

This will run the task at the specified time on the specified days.

Custom

This is new for Open-AudIT Enterprise 1.12_2. You can specify the number of days to wait between running a task. You must provide a date when the task should be first run along with a time. When configured you can schedule a job to be run every X days at the specified time.

Setting up Emailed Reports

When you enable a Report to be run on a schedule, the report is emailed to your chosen address. You MUST have set up email via menu -> System -> Email). We also have a "test email" button on that page. Input your details, save it and then test it. You should have a modal box that informs you if it successful or not and obviously a test email should arrive if it is successful. Once you have email configured, your scheduled reports can be configured.

On the Task Schedule page, click the "Add New" button to configure a task.

Choose the "type" of scheduled task from the first drop down. This will configure the additional fields required depending on the type of task. Obviously, choose Scheduled Report.

Provide an hour (hour only, no minutes as yet), give the task a name (this is not the name of the actual scheduled report itself), select which days you would like the report run, choose which report you would like run, supply an email address and choose a report format and you're done.

Reports will be sent with an email body of the report (in html format) and the report attached in the requested format.

Setting up Subnet Discovery

Setting up Discovery on a subnet is almost identical to running a regular Discovery via the web interface. The only additional items are the schedule hour and day(s) and a name for the Scheduled Task itself. You can take advantage of this to schedule multiple discoveries using different sets of credentials.

Setting up Active Directory Discovery

As per the Subnet Discovery, the Active Directory Discovery is also simply the same fields as a regular Active Directory Discovery with the addition of a day, hour(s) and name.

Setting Up Baselines

Once you have generated a Baseline Definition you can schedule it to be run against a given group of devices.

Setting up Group Updates

If you have a large number of device groups in Open-AudIT Community, you can disable the audit processing and discovery routines from running the group update routine. This should speed up processing device results and discovery but at a cost of not updating your groups. Open-AudIT Enterprise allows you to schedule when you would like the group update routine to run. In extreme circumstances it may be beneficial to postpone the group update routine and run it on a schedule in period(s) of quiet activity on the Open-AudIT server.