Support Entitlement Information

WarrantyDear JDisc friends,

it has been a while since the last blog post. In fact, we have added a lot of new features that you might not be aware of. This blog post just reports the most prominent enhancements. Refer to our release notes for more details.
The most prominent and long-awaited feature is the data collection for warranty and support entitlement information. In addition to that, we are able to collect configuration files from Brocade VDX and ICX switches, get detailed configuration information for IBM LPARs, and improve data collection for many storage devices. But we also improved usability by adding sorting capabilities to tables that were not sortable before and of course, we added many new devices.

Warranty and Support Entitlements

Many manufacturers offer some web page or API in order to check the warranty and support entitlement information for their devices. In most cases, the serial number is sufficient to get the current warranty and support entitlement state. We have implemented the support and warranty data collection for

  • Dell
  • Fujitsu
  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HP servers, storage, and networking devices)
  • Lenovo (and former IBM Intel-based server/laptops and desktops)
  • Lexmark

Currently, we are waiting to get access to the HP Inc. warranty information in order to cover HP laptops, desktops, and printers.

Once, we get access to the device warranty and support entitlement information, we can collect the list of warranty and support entries:

support entitlement, warranty information, data collectionSupport Entitlement and Warranty Information

With this information, it is easy to see what servers need new support contracts or which devices run out of warranty soon.

Brocade File Collection

JDisc Discovery already collected configuration files for Cisco and HP switches. In the latest build, we have added support to collect configuration files and version information from Brocade ICX and VDX switches so that JDisc Discovery can be used to back up switch configurations. But we are not only able to backup configurations. Our history feature lets you identify changes that have been made over time in the switch discovery.

IBM LPAR Details

JDisc Discovery is more and more being extended to collect software license management-related data. Recently, we added the ability to collect configuration data for IBM LPARs:

IBM LPAR, software license management, details
IBM LPAR Configuration details

What’s next?

We are currently working on improving the troubleshooting capabilities of JDisc Discovery. One of the missing troubleshooting capabilities is to find out how complete your discovery is. Imagine, you have discovered 3000 devices. Of course, you are happy to have scanned 3000 devices. But are these all devices? Are there some devices missing? If yes, which ones are missing? In order to answer these questions, we will add a new feature that compares the list of devices defined within the AD to the list of scanned devices. Most admins do not properly maintain computer accounts within the AD. Old accounts are not being deleted. Therefore, we also store the time stamp when a computer has been last seen by the domain controller. With this information, users can easily identify old and decommissioned  AD entries.

Cheers,
Thomas

About The Author

Thomas Trenz
I own and manage JDisc and its network inventory and discovery products. Before I started JDisc, I worked quite a long time for Hewlett-Packard developing software for network assessments and inventory projects. Feel free to contact me on Linked-In or Xing.

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