As we know, their are some gaps in the inventory of Network Interface Cards. This is mainly due to the wide variety of network cards out there, it can be hard to create a robust enough solution to accommodate all makes and manufacturers out there as well as keep up with the many changes.
However, in our environment, we are utilizing HP heavily. HP Proliant servers come with a utility called Hpnetsvy.exe that provide data about network products for HP ProLiant Ethernet Network adapters and HP ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming. With some creative scripting, this command line tool can pull data that can then be inventoried by the Altiris inventory solution to be leveraged in reports for network speed, duplex, and NIC team settings. We have created reports based off this inventory data that allows us to see where possible speed and duplex mismatch occurs on servers. Mismatch directly impacts network performance of the server and the applications that reside on it. With almost all applications using the network in some form or fashion, this can have severe implications that could have otherwise been identified and resolved in a more proactive way versus reactive.
Attached is the wise script executable, .wse file, and nsi (remove the .txt after the name as that it would not allow me to upload them otherwise) that I have developed that will work together to retrieve data based on the teamed values of the NIC's found in the system. The script sets the location of the hpnetsvy.exe to C:\Program Files\HP\NCU which may or may not be the same for all systems but is the default and able to be modified in the script. By running hpnetwvy.exe and sending the output to a file, simple parsing can retrieve the desired values.
We, as I am sure most people are, concerned with what the actual CURRENTLY SET speed and duplex are and what they are negotiating at, more than what it is SUPPOSED to be negotiating at. That is because even though the speed/duplex may be set to one thing, there may be a mismatch that would cause the NIC to negotiate at a much lower speed, such as 10/half instead of 100/full or Gig/full (if you so have that capability on your NIC's).
The parsed out values of this inventory include:
- The teamed NIC's negotiating mode setting which may be set to Network Fault Tolerance with or without Preference Order
- The teamed NICs CURRENTLY negotiating speed and duplex values.
- The names of the teamed members.
- The actual settings for the EACH individual team members speed and duplex which is usually Auto/Auto but can vary which will cause issues as each member in a team SHOULD be set to the same, regardless of all other settings.
As with my other wisescript inventory solutions, I integrate the creation of the nsi into the wisescript so as to simply plug the parsed values into it and then send it up to the NS specified in the registry via aexnsinvcollector.exe.
Thank you.