Upgrade to Virtual Computer Inventory

OCS (Open Computer and Software Inventory) is a free software that allows users to inventory their IT assets. Collecting data about the hardware and software of networked machines, OCS places them in a safe IT environment, accessing them via an OCS Inventory web interface.

Technicalities

An out-of-date OCS is currently installed and managed by the local CAHSS (College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences) Digital Team, on a centrally-supported VM (Virtual Machine). To ensure this upgrade goes as smoothly and successfully as possible, a detailed plan has been made:

  • A new TEST environment needs to be created
  • This requires a new VM to be created with OCS installed
  • This must be before the upgrade is applied to TEST and deployed to LIVE

In addition, two new Rocky 8 servers (TEST AND LIVE) will be built to manage cybersecurity, as the current server software (CentOS) is reaching its end-of-life.

Benefits

This necessary update is introducing a variety of opportunities and benefits for users, most notably providing users with the most up-to-date and efficient version of OCS. Additionally, this upgrade provides the opportunity for ISG to centralise control of the underlying operating system servers (to be the newly-introduced Rock 8 servers). The benefits extend to making project execution and delivery easier by making TEST-LIVE environments the standard.

Computer screen in library
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