JP2014056340A - Inventory management system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an inventory management system in which even when the same inventory is collected by a plurality of different IT asset systems, the inventory information is regarded as unique to prevent double management so as enable unitary management.SOLUTION: An inventory management system includes: a license management server 101 to which an inventory management system 102 and an inventory DB102 are mounted; and IT asset management systems 105, 106 connected to a management server 101 which collects inventory information of clients PC 107, 108. An inventory management system 102 compares a host identifier, a host name, a MAC address, a representative MAC address of a plurality of inventory information, and a user name, collected by IT asset management systems 105, 106 are compared with information previously collected and stored in an inventory DB; and a piece of inventory information is extracted for specification out of the collected plurality of pieces of inventory information.

Description

  The present invention relates to an inventory management system, and more particularly to an inventory management system suitable for use in a software license management system that manages software license excess / deficiency based on inventory information.

  In recent years, it has become common for companies to use inventory information collected by an IT resource management system to efficiently grasp software license usage information using a single license management system.

  As a conventional technique related to a license management system using this type of inventory information, for example, a technique described in Patent Document 1 is known. In general, when inventory information is collected by an IT resource management system, a host identifier is basically assigned to the collected machine. Based on the unique host identifier, the above-mentioned conventional technology can be regarded as a unique machine even if there is a transfer of IT resources due to personnel changes, etc., between the same IT resource management systems. Thus, the inventory information can be managed centrally.

JP 2002-279165 A

  Recent enterprises are actively absorbing and merging between the same and different industries by strengthening leading businesses and selling unprofitable businesses. It is being promoted to transfer branch offices, etc., of problematic countries to regional areas and to integrate business offices. In addition, large corporate groups are consolidating management operations, including consolidated subsidiaries, for the purpose of controlling and improving compliance management. Under such circumstances, when IT asset management is realized by different vendor tools for each company, a plurality of IT asset management systems exist in one company at the merged stage.

  The prior art described above can cope with the movement of IT resources in the software license management by the license management system as long as it is between the same IT resource management systems.

  However, the prior art described in Patent Document 1 described above does not consider the inventory collected by the IT asset management systems of different vendors as being unique, and the management operation of the IT asset management systems of different vendors is unified. However, it is difficult to carry out. Because IT identifiers of different vendors have different host identifiers for each IT asset management system, machines cannot be regarded as unique, and there is a high possibility of managing machines redundantly. It is necessary to count the license excess and deficiency every time, and from the viewpoint of centralized software asset management, it is necessary to eliminate duplication every asset audit, and it takes a lot of work to create an audit report. Because.

  The object of the present invention is to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, and even when the same inventory is collected by a plurality of different IT asset management systems, the inventory information is regarded as unique, avoids duplication management, and is unified. The object is to provide an inventory management system that enables efficient management.

  In order to achieve the above object, the present invention collects inventory information and uses the collected inventory information to manage the excess or deficiency of software licenses in an inventory update service processing unit and a host PC allocation processing unit. An update processing unit, a new registration processing unit, the inventory update service processing unit, the host PC allocation processing unit refers to the inventory DB, and IT resource management systems of different tool vendors collect from the client PC The host identifier of the plurality of inventory information, the host name of the host PC and the representative MAC address communicated at the time of collecting the inventory information of the host PC are compared with the contents of the inventory DB. Identifier, host name of host PC And when at least one of the representative MAC addresses matches, the inventory information collected by the IT asset management system of the different tool vendor is updated by the update processing unit, and as a result of the comparison, if neither matches, If the host names of the collected inventory information and the MAC address possessed by the host PC, the comparison by the representative MAC, the comparison by the host name are performed in order, and none of them match in the comparison process, When the new registration processing unit performs a new registration of the collected inventory information, and in the comparison process, if any of them matches, the user information is compared, and the collected inventory information One is extracted, and the update processing unit is made to update the extracted inventory information. .

  According to the present invention, the reliability of host PC allocation processing in inventory information update registration can be significantly improved as compared with the conventional one, and the management cost for the migration of IT resource management systems and the movement of IT resources can be greatly reduced. Is possible.

It is a figure explaining the system configuration | structure of a software license management system including the inventory management system by one Embodiment of this invention, and an operation example. It is a figure explaining the outline | summary of the structure of the client side IT resource management system in the embodiment of this invention, and the operation | movement by the license management server side. It is a figure which shows the structural example of the table of inventory DB. It is a flowchart explaining the processing operation in the host PC allocation processing unit of the inventory update service processing unit. It is a figure explaining the basic comparison method of the idea of the registration history of a MAC address, and the process of the circle 1 which is the inventory temporary specific process of FIG. It is a figure explaining the outline | summary of the process of the circle 1 which is an inventory temporary specific process in FIG. It is a figure explaining the detail of the process of the circle 2 which is a comparison process by the inventory group in FIG. It is a figure explaining the detail of the exception 1 in step 411 in the process of the circle 2 which is the comparison process by the inventory group of FIG. It is a figure explaining the detail of the exception 2 in step 411 in the process of the circle 2 which is the comparison process by the inventory group of FIG. FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an example of a state when a host PC to be updated is finally allocated in the process of circle 3 illustrated in FIG. 4.

  Embodiments of an inventory management system according to the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is a diagram for explaining a system configuration and an operation example of a software license management system including an inventory management system according to an embodiment of the present invention. The software license management system described below is an example of a software license management system using inventory information collected by a plurality of different IT resource management systems.

  The software license management system shown in FIG. 1 includes a license management server 101 having an inventory management system 102 and an inventory DB 104, and an IT resource management system 105 connected to the license management server 101 that collects inventory information of client PCs 107 and 108. , 106. The inventory management system 102 has a function of registering and updating the inventory collected by the IT resource management systems 105 and 106 in the inventory DB 104. In order to realize these functions, the host allocation processing unit 1031, the update processing unit 1032, An inventory update service processing unit 103 that performs registration and update services of data in the inventory DB 104 using the new registration processing unit 1033 is provided.

  In the above description, the license management server 101 is a well-known information processing apparatus including a storage device such as a CPU, memory, HDD, and the like, and the function constructed by the inventory management system 102 is a program stored in the storage device. This function is realized by being loaded into the memory and executed by the CPU.

  The inventory management system 102 according to the embodiment of the present invention is configured as described above. However, when the IT resource management system used as an organization is migrated from the IT resource management system 106 to another IT resource management system 105, the above-described inventory management system 102 is configured. This causes the problem described in. That is, when inventory collection is performed in each IT resource management system 105, 106, a unique code called a host identifier is issued, but the identifier depends on the IT resource management system that performed the collection. Is transferred from the IT resource management system 106 to another IT resource management system 105 and collected by the IT resource management system 105, the same inventory that has already been collected by the IT asset management system 106 is a completely different inventory. It will be treated as being. Therefore, in order to avoid this, in the embodiment of the present invention, the inventory update service processing unit 103 is configured to incorporate a mechanism for maintaining the uniqueness of the inventory.

  FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining the outline of the configuration of the client side IT resource management system and the operation on the license management server side in the embodiment of the present invention.

  As shown in FIG. 2, the IT resource management system 202 corresponding to the client-side IT resource management system 105 or 106 shown in FIG. 1 includes an inventory collection processing unit 203, an inventory file creation processing unit 204, and an inventory transmission. And a processing unit 205. The IT resource management system 202 is configured in a well-known information processing apparatus including a storage device such as a CPU, a memory, and an HDD, and functions of the above-described processing unit provided in the IT resource management system 202. Is configured by a program stored in a storage device, and is realized by being loaded into a memory and executed by a CPU.

  In the above description, the inventory installed in the client PC 201 corresponding to the client PC 107 or 108 shown in FIG. 1 is collected by the inventory collection processing unit 203 of the IT resource management system 202 and created in the inventory file by the inventory file creation processing unit 204. The The created inventory file is transmitted to the license management server side by the inventory transmission processing unit 205. The processing so far is a general operation on the client side in the license management operation.

  The sent inventory file is received by the inventory update service processing unit 103 of the inventory management system 102 and is transferred to the host PC allocation processing unit 1031 to perform host allocation processing. The details of the processing in the host PC allocation processing unit 1031 will be described later with reference to FIG. 4. The processing is performed by referring to the contents of the inventory table in the inventory DB 104. The registration processing unit 1031 Processing is transferred to 1032 or the update processing unit 1033, new registration or update processing is performed, and the contents after the processing are registered in the inventory DB 104.

  FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a configuration example of the inventory DB table. Here, the configuration of the inventory DB table 104 will be described.

  The inventory DB 104 manages an inventory table and a MAC address table. The inventory table 3-1 indicates a host identifier that is a unique value for identifying a host, a host name that indicates the host name, and a communication MAC address of the host, as described in the item description of FIG. The MAC address, the IP address indicating the IP address of the host, the OS name indicating the OS name of the host, the user name indicating the name of the user who uses the host, and the use department 7 indicating the department using the host It stores a lot of data consisting of one item. The data in the inventory table 3-1 is as shown as a data example in FIG.

  As described in the item description of FIG. 3B, the MAC address table 3-2 includes a host identifier, which is a unique value for identifying an inventory, and a MAC address communicated at the time of the last inventory collection of the host. A representative MAC, a MAC that is a MAC address possessed by the host, and a registration date and time that is the date and time when the MAC address of the host is registered are stored. The data in the MAC address table 3-2 is as shown in FIG. 3B as a data example.

  FIG. 4 is a flowchart for explaining the processing operation in the host PC allocation processing unit 1031 of the inventory update service processing unit 103, which will be described next. In the description of the flow illustrated in FIG. 4, regarding Yes and No of each determination process, Yes means “match” and “corresponding”, and No means “mismatch” and “not applicable”.

  When the processing here is started, the host PC allocation processing unit 1031 refers to the inventory table 3-1 of the inventory DB 402, and the host identifier in the inventory file 401 transmitted from the IT asset management system on the client PC side. When the host identifiers in the inventory table 3-1 of the inventory DB 402 are compared, and there is a mismatch, the host name and representative MAC in the inventory file 401 and the host name and representative MAC in the inventory table 3-1 of the inventory DB 402 are (Steps 403 and 404).

  If the comparison process in any of the comparison processes in Steps 403 and 404 is applicable, the inventory file is set as the update target, and the process is shifted to the process in the update processing unit 1032. In other words, since the host identifier is a unique value of the host PC issued for each IT resource management system, it is considered that the inventory is the same when this value matches, and the host name and representative MAC are compared in the comparison process. Since the representative MAC is the MAC address that was communicated at the time of inventory collection, the update processing unit 1032 determines the inventory table 3 in the inventory DB 104 according to the contents of the transmitted inventory file when the comparison is applicable. The contents of -1 are updated (step 416).

  The comparison processing method described above is a specification that has already been proven in a conventional license management system.

  If there is no match in either of the comparison processes in steps 403 and 404, the inventory file 401 is not an update target but a new registration target. In this case, two inventory of the same machine are stored. In order to avoid this problem, the embodiment of the present invention is a round 1 process, which is an inventory temporary identification process based on a host name and a MAC address, and a comparison process based on an inventory group. The process of circle 2 and the process of circle 3 which is a comparison process based on inventory contents are executed. When the process proceeds after the process of circle 1, the temporary specific state is set to the end, and the inventory file 401 is specified as the update target only after passing the process of circle 3. Hereinafter, the process of circle 1 that is the inventory temporary identification process, the process of circle 2 that is the comparison process by the inventory group, and the process of circle 3 that is the comparison process by the contents of the inventory will be described.

  If none of the comparison processes in Steps 403 and 404 correspond, the process proceeds to the process of circle 1 which is the temporary inventory identification process. The process of circle 1 is a process that proceeds when the comparison by “host name + representative MAC” does not apply in step 404, and therefore the host name matches, but the MAC address may not match for some reason. . Since there are cases where a plurality of MAC addresses are possessed by each host PC, the comparison processing assumes a case where the MAC address currently being communicated has been changed or deleted for some reason. Therefore, in the embodiment of the present invention, when the representative MAC does not match, the MAC address registration history is left on the inventory management system side for each host PC in order to compare other MAC addresses possessed by the inventory. I am going to do that.

  FIG. 5 is a diagram for explaining the concept of the MAC address registration history and the basic comparison method of the circle 1 process, which is the inventory temporary identification process of FIG. 4, which will be described next. As a premise in FIG. 5, it is assumed that all host PCs appearing in FIG. 5 have the same host name.

  First, host PC: A 502 and host PC: B 503 are newly registered in the inventory DB 501 by collecting inventory information for the first time. Before the second collection, the inventory DB 501 includes the previously collected MAC address A of the host PC: A502 (hereinafter referred to as MAC: A) and the MAC address B of the host PC: B503 (hereinafter referred to as MAC: B) as the host PC. : A504, registered as possessed by host PC: B505.

  Here, consider the case of collecting the host PC: A 506 and the host PC: B 507 to which the MAC address C (hereinafter referred to as MAC: C) is added during the second collection. MAC: C assumes a MAC address that can be shared by a plurality of machines such as a wireless LAN card. Under such a premise, when the second collection is performed, the results are shown as host PC: A508 and host PC: B509, and MAC: C is added to the host PC: A508.

  When the host PC: A510 and the host PC: B511 to which MAC: C is added are collected at the third collection, the result is shown as the host PC: A512 and the host PC: B513, and the host PC: B513 has the MAC: C is added.

  In the pattern so far, there is no problem in specifying the host PC by the process of circle 1 in FIG. 4 and the method described later with reference to FIG. However, when the fourth collection is reached in this state, the host PC having MAC: X and MAC: C:? 516 ("?" For host PC :? indicates a host PC whose identity is unknown), it is necessary to perform a new registration process as a separate inventory. If you try to identify, you can not identify. This is because the host name and the MAC: C are identical even though the host PC to be allocated already exists, such as the host PC: A512 and the host PC: A514, the host PC: B513, and the host PC: B515. Because I do it. For this reason, when the host PC is specified at this point, there is a possibility that the registration result is not intended by the user, such as updating the host PC of either the host PC: A512 or the host PC: B513. Therefore, even if the PC is specified at the time of processing of the circle 1, it is assumed that it is provisionally specified.

  In consideration of the points described above, the description returns to the process of circle 1 shown in FIG. The process of circle 1 is performed by comparing the host name + MAC comparison process in step 405, the representative MAC comparison process in step 406, and the host name comparison process in step 407. It is a process that shifts to the process or the process of circle 3. Here, “MAC” in step 405 of the comparison process by host name + MAC indicates any MAC address possessed by the inventory.

  FIG. 6 is a diagram for explaining the outline of the circle 1 process, which is the inventory temporary identification process in FIG. 4, and this will be described next. The process of circle 1 here is the host PC with the host name AAA? This is a process of comparing inventory 601 and inventory already registered in the inventory DB 602.

  The example illustrated in FIG. 6 illustrates an example in which the corresponding inventory at the time of the comparison process using the host name + MAC in step 405 in FIG. 4 is host PC: A604, host PC: B605, and host PC: C606. In this example, the inventory of these three units is temporarily extracted as a target inventory 603 as a temporary specific target inventory list.

  In the process of circle 1 in FIG. 4, the inventory extraction process 408 is performed without using the representative MAC comparison process step 406 and the host name comparison process step 407, with the target inventory 603 as the temporarily identified inventory. The inventory of the target inventory 603 is extracted from the inventory DB 602.

  If the result of performing the host name comparison step 407 is not applicable, the key information for specifying is insufficient in the host PC allocation. Therefore, it is determined as a new registration target, and the process proceeds to step 417 of the new registration process. Then, the processing result is registered in the inventory DB 418.

  After performing the process of extracting the inventory of the target inventory 603 from the inventory DB 602 in step 408 of the inventory extraction process, the comparison in step 409 of the comparison target remaining comparison process is performed, and one or more inventory is performed in step 408 of the inventory extraction process Is extracted, the process of circle 2 which is a comparison process by the inventory group is executed.

  If the result of step 409 of the comparison target remaining comparison process is not applicable, that is, if only one inventory has been extracted, it is determined as a new registration target, and the process proceeds to step 417 of the new registration process. Are registered in the inventory DB 418.

  If it is determined in step 409 that one or more inventory has been extracted, the process proceeds to the process of circle 2 in FIG. In the process of circle 2, first, the process proceeds to step 410 of the group creation process for each MAC, the group is created for each MAC, and then the process of step 411 for inventory group comparison is performed. If not, the process proceeds to the process of circle 3 after performing the inventory number comparison process.

  FIG. 7 is a diagram for explaining the details of the process of the circle 2 which is the comparison process by the inventory group in FIG. 4, and will be described next.

  In the process of circle 2 in FIG. 4, as shown in FIG. The host name and MAC address of 705 are compared with the host PC: A702, host PC: B703, and host PC: C704 of the target inventory 701. Then, as shown as an inventory extraction group 706 for each MAC address, the host PC:? A matching inventory is extracted for each MAC: B and MAC: C, which is the MAC address 705 has. Then, inventory groups can be created as many as the MAC addresses possessed by the host PCs collected this time, such as MAC: B group 707 and MAC: C group 708. Here, when there is a MAC address such as MAC: C as described above, there is a high possibility that a group having a plurality of inventory is formed. Therefore, the MAC: C group 708 is excluded, and it is considered that the credibility is high when the inventory of the MAC: B group 707 with the smallest inventory belongs is specified.

  The process indicated by circle 2 in FIG. 4 is basically performed by applying the comparison method as described above, but as an exception, consider the inventory group comparison process which is the process in step 411 in FIG.

  FIG. 8 is a diagram for explaining details of exception 1 in step 411 in the process of circle 2 that is the comparison process by the inventory group in FIG. 4, and FIG. 9 is a step in process of circle 2 that is the comparison process by the inventory group in FIG. It is a figure explaining the detail of the exception 2 in 411, Next, these are demonstrated.

  In the case of the idea that one of the MAC addresses possessed by the host PC in the process of circle 1 in FIG. 4 is the same, the currently collected inventory possesses MAC: C and is compared with the registered inventory group However, in the case where only those match, another point of view is required for identification.

  Considering such a viewpoint, as shown in FIG. 8, when the host PC: A805, the host PC: B806, and the host PC: C807 exist and the inventory to be collected this time is the host PC: B806, Consider a case in which whether or not it is an update target is compared with the host PC: A802, host PC: B803, and host PC: C804 in the target inventory 801 already registered.

  It can be seen that the host PC: B803 and the host PC: B806 match a plurality of MAC addresses. As in this example, even if one of the MAC addresses is an address by a wireless LAN card such as MAC: C, only one wireless LAN card can be inserted at a time. The possibility of having more than one is extremely low.

  On the other hand, since the reliability that the other address excluding the address by the above-mentioned wireless LAN card is a machine-specific MAC address is extremely high, in the embodiment of the present invention, the specific condition is more specific than the other extracted inventory. The concept of giving priority is applied before the comparison 412 by the inventory to which it belongs. FIG. 9 shows this expressed in the same way as the comparison 412 by the inventory to which it belongs.

  Referring to FIG. 9, assuming that the inventory of host PC: B806 described with reference to FIG. 8 is collected, the inventory of host PC: A902, host PC: B903, and host PC: C904 is temporarily specified, and the target inventory including them 901 is generated. In this case, the MAC: B group 906 and the MAC: C group 907 are created in the inventory extraction group 905 for each MAC address as in the example described with reference to FIG. In that case, an inventory that belongs to a plurality of groups and has a large number of groups to which the group belongs is assumed to be provisionally specified in the process of circle 2. In the case of the example shown in FIG. 9, the inventory of the host PC: B903 is targeted. At this time, the host PC: B903 inventory is set as a new target inventory, and the process proceeds to the process of circle 3 in FIG.

  Next, the process of circle 3 which is a comparison process based on the contents of the inventory in FIG. 4 will be described.

  The process of circle 3 in FIG. 4 is performed when there is one or more target inventory as a result of performing the comparison target remaining comparison step 413 at the stage where the process of circle 2 as described above is completed. Process. If the result of the comparison target remaining comparison step 413 is less than one, the process returns to the comparison target residual comparison step 409.

  Since the process of circle 3 is an OR condition, first, the process of step 414 of user information comparison is executed. The process of the software comparison step 415 is executed, and if the comparison process is applicable, the process is specified and the process proceeds to the update process step 416. The result updated by this update process is registered in the inventory DB 418. If the result of the registry software comparison step 415 does not correspond, the process returns to the comparison target remaining comparison step 413 in the process of circle 2.

  In the process of the user information comparison step 414 described above, the logon user name at the time of inventory collection is compared, and if applicable at this point, the allocation process is completed as the host PC to be updated.

  In the registry software comparison 415, the software registered in the registry is compared. Since these software include a correction program, an OS update program, and the like, it is considered that the contents are distributed by each host PC when a few months have passed. In addition, by setting X% (variable) as the set value of the matching rate according to the tendency of the organization, it is possible to set it so that it can be considered deeply, or conversely, there is almost no comparison processing itself. .

  FIG. 10 is a diagram showing an example of a state when the host PC to be updated is finally allocated in the process of circle 3 shown in FIG.

  In the embodiments of the present invention described above, it is assumed that the logic of the process of circle 1 and the process of circle 2 is the main, and the host PC to be updated is allocated at the time of these processes. In order to further improve the reliability in the allocation, the processing of the circle 3 is provided. However, in the flow described with reference to FIG. 4, considering the case corresponding to the host name comparison 407, the influence on the comparison of the processing of the circle 3 is high, and thus the processing cannot be ignored.

  According to the above-described embodiment of the present invention, when inventory information of the same machine is collected by different IT resource management systems, the inventory information of the same machine is regarded as unique and is managed in a centralized manner, avoiding duplicate management. This makes it possible to significantly improve the reliability of the host PC allocation process in inventory information update registration, which greatly increases the management cost for the migration of IT resource management systems and the movement of IT assets. It becomes possible to reduce.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 101 License management server 102 Inventory management system 103 Inventory update service process part 1031 Host allocation process part 1032 Update process part 1033 New registration process part 104 Inventory DB
105, 106 IT resource management system 107, 108 Client PC
203 Inventory Collection Processing Unit 204 Inventory File Creation Processing Unit 205 Inventory Transmission Processing Unit

Claims (1)

In an inventory management system that collects inventory information and uses the collected inventory information to manage software license excess and deficiency,
An inventory update service processing unit, a host PC allocation processing unit, an update processing unit, and a new registration processing unit;
The inventory update service processing unit refers to an inventory DB by the host PC allocation processing unit, and a host identifier of a plurality of inventory information collected from a client PC by an IT asset management system of a different tool vendor, and a host name of the host PC And the representative MAC address communicated at the time of collecting inventory information of the host PC is compared with the contents of the inventory DB. As a result of comparison, at least one of the host identifier, the host name of the host PC, and the representative MAC address is If they match, the inventory information collected by the IT asset management system of the different tool vendor is updated by the update processing unit, and if none of the comparison results in the comparison, the hosts of the collected inventory information Name and MA possessed by the host PC The comparison by address, the comparison by the representative MAC, and the comparison by the host name are performed in order, and if none of the comparisons match, the new registration processing unit is made to newly register the collected inventory information. In the comparison process, if any of them matches, the user information is compared, one of the collected inventory information is extracted, and the update of the extracted inventory information is performed in the update processing unit. Inventory management system characterized by having