A List of System Scanning Tools

Edit: Some links no longer work.

Originally posted November 3, 2015 on AIXchange

What kinds of tools do you use to document and check your systems? I’ve written about prtconf, a built-in tool, and hmcscanner, but many other solutions are available.

Here are three software tools that readers have shared with me. I’m not endorsing any of them; my hope is that by listing a few solutions in one place, it will help you conveniently research new options for your own environments.

systemscanaix:

SystemScan AIX can help by identifying problems, mistakes, and omissions made during the build phase, helping you to improve the security, performance, and serviceability of your systems.

(It) consists of a single RPM that can be installed on AIX 5.3, 6.1, or 7.1. It also has separate modules for HMC/IVM, and VIOS, that can be run from cron and silently produce system configuration reports that can then be transferred to another server for analysis.

For details, see the sample report and FAQs.

aixhealthcheck:

AIX Health Check is software that scans your AIX system for issues. It’s like an automated AIX check list. Download it from our website, unpack and run it on your AIX server and receive a full report in minutes. You decide the format: Text, HTML, CSV or XML output. Have the report emailed to you if you like. AIX Health Check is designed to help you pro-actively detect configuration abnormalities or other issues that may keep your AIX system from performing optimally.

See the sample reports and FAQs for more.

cfg2html, a free tool:

Cfg2html is a UNIX shell script similar to supportconfig, getsysinfo or get_config, except that it creates a HTML (and plain ASCII) system documentation for HP-UX 10.xx/11.xx, Integrity Virtual Machine, SCO-UNIX, AIX, Sun OS and Linux systems. Plug-ins for SAP, Oracle, Informix, Serviceguard, Fiber Channel/SAN, TIP/ix, OpenText (IXOS/LEA), SAN Mass Storage like MAS, EMC, EVA, XPs, Network Node Manager and HP DataProtector etc. are included. The first versions of cfg2html were written for HP-UX. Meanwhile the cfg2html HP-UX stream was ported to all major *NIX platforms, LINUX and small embedded systems.

Some consider it to be the Swiss army knife for the Account Support Engineer, Customer Engineer, System Admin, Solution Architect etc. Originally developed to plan a system update, it was also found useful to perform basic troubleshooting or performance analysis. The production of nice HTML and plain ASCII documentation is part of its utility.

Go here for additional information.

Feel free to use the comments to mention other tools and options.