Introduction

Open-AudIT Enterprise provides a Collector Server or distributed solution (since the 2.0.6 release).

To understand the benefits and some background refer to the product information here:

https://opmantek.com/network-discovery-inventory-software/collector/

Benefits

Collector / Server is designed so that you can have a remote or 'collector' instance of Open-AudIT running on a remote machine. That collector instance might be in another security zone, subnet, cloud hosting instance or at a customer site. The remote collector is then doing all the discovering and auditing of devices locally avoiding networking and firewalling complexity. The Collector once it has registered is completely controlled by the 'server'. This means you only need an HTTP or HTTPS connection from that Collector to the Server.

Collector / Server is an Enterprise only feature. Enterprise customers receive one Collector license for free. Additional Collector licenses can be purchased as required.

Details

The collector is essentially a full install of Open-AudIT in ‘collector’ mode. This mode would reduce visible functionality in an effort to simplify and focus the application. It is designed to collect information about reachable networks and devices. The collector is designed to run discovery upon the network it is situated in. It is not restricted to only that network, but ideally it would essentially be “one collector per subnet” where required. The collector is driven on a schedule by the server and runs discovery upon the network as specified. It can run all functions that a full Open-AudIT installation can run, although most are removed from the GUI as they're not required.

Once installed and setup, control of the Collector is performed on the Server.

The only required network ports between the collector and server are 80 or 443 (TCP connection established from the Collector to the Server). The Open-AudIT database is not shared between these installs.

By default the collector will request from the server any discovery tasks every 5 minutes (you can configure this on the server for new Collectors using the configuration item collector_check_minutes) therefor any discovery tasks for the collector should be scheduled for 0, 5, 10, 15, etc minutes.

Enabling Collectors

Please refer to the dedicated Collector server creation page

Example of Creating a discovery for the collector

On the server.

Add credentials as required. This is no different than credentials for discoveries run from the Server.

On the server.

Create a Discovery.

On the server.

Create a Task/Discovery Schedule (menu → Discover → Discoveries → Schedule Discoveries) or (menu → Admin → Tasks - Create Tasks ) . Choose the "Discovery" you just created, set "Type" to Discovery and "Collector" to the Collector you wish to run it on. Set your minute for 0 and/or 15 and/or 30 and/or 45. Choose the required hour(s), day(s), etc.

Credentials Create

Discoveries Create

Tasks Create

Once you have a working Collector and you have Discoveries and Tasks which use that Collector, the next time the Collector checks-in with the server, if a discovery is due to run for that Collector, it should run. The Collector should forward the details of any discovered devices to the Server.