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Snow Inventory Agents and Oracle Scanners

The Snow Inventory Agents and Oracle Scanners collect inventory data from the computers in your organization, enabling you to manage and control your software assets via Snow Atlas or Snow License Manager.

The Snow Inventory Agents for Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS are installed on the computers and servers in your organization. They collect inventory data, such as software information, software usage, user information and hardware specifications. The agents send the collected data in an encrypted file to a Snow Inventory endpoint for further processing. The data is normalized and later processed and refined for use in Snow Atlas or Snow License Manager.

To collect Oracle related data, you can deploy the Snow Inventory Oracle Scanners to the computers and servers in your Oracle environments:

  • Snow Inventory Oracle Scanner inventories data regarding Oracle Database installations, including their Database Options and Management Packs, on a particular environment and also provides information on their usage and license needs.

  • Snow Inventory Oracle Middleware Scanner inventories data for your Oracle Middleware Products installations on a particular environment.

  • Snow Inventory Oracle Hardware Scanner collects hardware-related data on environments that contain Oracle Database and Middleware products as part of the Oracle verified data solution.

  • Snow Inventory Java Scanner inventories data for all Java installations on a particular environment and provides information on their need for Oracle commercial license.

The data collected by the Oracle Scanners is included in the encrypted file that the Snow Inventory Agent sends to the Snow Inventory endpoint. The type of endpoint differs depending on whether you are in a Snow Atlas or a Snow License Manager environment.

Endpoints​

For Snow Atlas, the Snow Inventory endpoint is a Snow Extender. The Snow Extender forwards the collected data to Snow Atlas.

For information on how to connect your environment with Snow Atlas via Snow Extenders, see Snow Extenders.

Snow Atlas endpoint

For Snow License Manager, the Snow Inventory endpoint is a Snow Inventory Server. The data is processed and transferred to Snow License Manager.

For detailed information on the Snow Inventory Server architecture, see Snow Inventory Server.

Snow License Manager endpoint

Installation and configuration​

The agent configuration file, snowagent.config, tells the Snow Inventory Agent what to inventory, when to inventory, and where to send the inventory result. It must be included in the agent installation package. See Configuration of Snow Inventory Agents for a description of the agent configuration file.

For a description of how to install, configure, and use a specific agent or scanner, see the respective Snow Inventory Agent or Oracle Scanner user guide.

Cloud application metering​

The Snow Inventory Agents for Windows and macOS can be configured to capture cloud application usage data. For a detailed description of the feature and how to enable and disable it, see Cloud application metering.

Zero-footprint inventory​

In a zero-footprint inventory solution, the Snow Inventory Agents are not installed locally on the computers. Instead, each computer is inventoried using the Snow Inventory Agent as a remotely executed command. No application usage data can be gathered in this scenario. See Zero-footprint inventory for more information.