Please give reference/guidance to make a web application for managing all IT assest/devices

Question

Please give reference/guidance to make a web application for managing all IT assest/devices . Application consist of two component Web application and Windows .NET Application. Client Windows .NET Application scan all active network & find all IT assests like printer,scanner & upload all data into the web application.

• Now our team using Asp.net & c# technology for this project.
• Please give suggestion regarding the client application & web application interaction.
• Suggest any library/reference required for the project.
• Is Microsoft sync frame work good for client application.
• Is Microsoft WCF will be a good option for client & server interaction(for making API).
• How to scan active network for finding devices by using client application.

Answer 1

Consider this approach:

1. Asset Catalog Service (WCF App). Its responsibility is to act as a repository for found assets. The service encapsulates the actual storage (database, etc).
2. Asset Finder (Winform app). Its responsibility is to scan all active network, find all IT assets and calls Asset Catalog Service to register the device. Asset Catalog Service will reconsile whether a device has not been registered (therefore will be stored), a device have been updated (therefore will be updated) or no change (therefore will be ignored). You may have multiple instances of Asset Finder running at the same time to speed up the discovery process. Asset Catalog Service or another service may be used to keep track the work pool of the asset finders.
3. The website (Asp.Net Web app). Its responsibility is to visualize the asset catalog. It queries Asset Catalog Service and display the result to the end users.

I can't see any obvious use case for using Microsoft Sync framework.

Unfortunately, I don't have any experience in writing any asset discovery algorithm. Others might be able to help on that point.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

This is a bit off topic, but I would suggest looking at options from existing vendors that will meet your overall business requirements. Asset detection and management is not a simple task and creating an in-house application to do it is often a waste of time and money that could be better spent on core business needs or other IT support/resources. Purchasing software from an existing vendor will give you a much better solution than whatever you can code up in a week, a month, or even a year. If you are trying to catalog even a medium sized network with over 100 nodes then using an established system could end up being much cheaper than building your own. Here are a few examples of existing products:

http://www.vector-networks.com/components/network-discovery-and-mapping.php

http://www.manageengine.com/products/service-desk/track-it-assets.html

I haven't used either of them, but I have been down a similar route trying to create an in--house server monitoring and management system. We spent two weeks working on a prototype that was eventually scraped for a 3rd-party system that cost $1,000 a year. It would have cost us at least $10,000 to build something with 1/10th the features, let alone support and maintain it. Even just searching for a FOSS solution and then using that as the basis for your project (something like nmap) would be better than starting from scratch.

Best of luck!

Answer 3

I will suggest you to go for a simple solution like
1. A windows application that takes care of scanning the entire network of computers from the installed computer and then sends the information to a web service
2. A web service to accept the assets list and then save them to the database 3. An asp.net application to display and catalog the indexed assets.

The part that will become somewhat complicated will be the assets discovery since it should be handled by the windows application. Your best bets are
1. to depend on the windows registry
2. to use the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)
3. If you dare you can dirctly program against the Netapi32.dll: NetServerEnum or similar low level win32 API

Hope this will help you to get started

Answer 4

Pls reffer this link http://www.vector-networks.com/components/network-discovery-and-mapping.php

Answer 5

Windows based application should be used to scan network and collect info about devices/assets available in the network. save those information in database. look at following project to get and idea how you may scan the network http://sourceforge.net/projects/nexb/

the same database should be used by ASP .net app to be used for reporting purposes, you may also use it to group/tag/categorize various assets.

Also store scanned devices in separate "departments" depending on their IP schema.