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I'm looking to find a tool which can gather configuration information about our systems including the info below:

  • Config Files (e.g. based on a list of filenames / heuristics)
  • Config Tables from Databases (e.g. based on instance, catalog & query)
  • Share Permissions / Structure (e.g. based on a list of top level folders)
  • Server Permissions (e.g. based on a list of server names; including wildcards)
  • SQL Permissions (e.g. based on a list of instances)
  • Scheduled Tasks (e.g. based on a list of servers & names to exclude (so we don't log the Adobe updates job for example))
  • AD Accounts (e.g. based on searchbase / previously discovered objectguids (in case something previous tracked is moved))
  • AD Groups (e.g. as with AD Accounts, including (recursive) membership lists)

...persisting this information to file (some structured text file, as appropriate; must be human readable), then automatically push this info to Visual Studio Online (TFS).

The point of this is to implement version control / change tracking of all system info without relying on people keeping this info up to date. Where deliberate changes are made we can manually log it and assign work items to the same VSO projects / in the same format; but having an automated script will help to pick up what we miss.

This gives us a useful tool for debugging and ensures our configuration information is backed up / recoverable.

I'm thinking of writing PowerShell scripts to gather this info; but then realised others are likely doing this already / so there's probably existing tools to help.

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    I'm not sure whether this meets your requirements, but I am reminded of this project: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcfg2 I don't know much about that project except that it is similar to tools like puppet, ansible etc. but has an emphasis on reconciling manually-configured servers with a declarative statement of the desired configuration (which presumably could be your VSO project). Are you interested mostly in MS integration or a framework to fit that into, or must it be both?
    – Croad Langshan
    Aug 22, 2015 at 18:34
  • @CroadLangshan; thank-you, that looks like it does all I'm after and more (aside from only mentioning Unix/Linux under Platform); I'll see if we can use it for Windows / if it can be easily adapted, or if coming up with a bespoke solution may try to copy their work to produce something compatible so we could switch in future. Thanks for the link. Our systems predominantly use MS technologies; but I'm happy to use any tooling so long as it can communicate with these (and is Windows hosted; sadly we don't have much *nix in house expertise).
    – JohnLBevan
    Aug 24, 2015 at 12:38
  • Sounds like you now know more about the project than I do, why don't you add an answer (should explain briefly what it does for you rather than just a link)?
    – Croad Langshan
    Aug 25, 2015 at 7:30

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I see you you have requested quite a few things because something you have from the SQL server and something from the underlying Windows server. We have a tool that will pick all the data from the SQL server and some data from the windows server (e.g. OS, RAM, CPU, Installed programs and updates, local admins etc) and all the SQL server settings like instances, permissions on the server and DB's, databases and all the details underneath (tables, procedures, indexes, columns etc). All will be stored in the snapshot and then you can compare configs over time.

The tool is available at https://www.sqldockit.com/

However I have noticed you would like to capture some other configs (I am not sure which so I will talk about generic stuff) we have another software where you can via the PowerShell capture anything you want. So anything that has PowerShell exposure can be documented and compared over time.

The application is available here: https://www.syskit.com/features/powershell-administration/

it is a new concept so I would be glad to hear your thoughts. If you want to get in touch with me you can over my blog :-) http://www.lemonbits.com/contact-me/

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