There is a large list of features in Systems Directorate. Below is a list of the features in the system and individual topic pages will explain the components in more detail.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Database Support | Support for Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL databases for storing collected information. PostgreSQL is a free database that can handle terabytes of data. |
| Agents | Agent software running on managed computers is small in size and can be deployed very fast. An auto-updating capability is planned before the first release. Agents communicate over HTTP/HTTPS in one direction only to the server so complex network configurations are not needed. |
| Servers | Directorate server code is also small in size and can run on any computer from Windows Vista through Windows 2012R2. Split into primary and secondary servers allows an administrator to reduce load on a single primary server by placing secondary servers at lower bandwidth locations. |
| Users and Teams | Support for any number of users which can be organized into either role and support teams. |
| Companies | Multiple companies can be defined so that one administrator can manage multiple different clients. User and team roles can be limited for each company. |
| Agent Assignments | Agents can be assigned to servers and companies based on many different types of rules like hostnames, sub-nets, AD sites, etc. Multiple servers can be defined for redundancy. |
| Policy Updates | Agents download policy from the servers on regular intervals to learn of new configurations. |
| Data Collection | Collects inventory and performance data from sources like WMI, delimited files, user scripts and programs, etc. All the data is stored on the agent and can be used by any other part of the application or user created tools and scripts. Data is stored in simple tab delimited files so they can be used by other applications. |
| Device Groups | Groups can be created using a variety of different methods that help group computers into collections so that specific collections, distributions, or monitors can be targeted. Groups cans also be created by looking at membership or non-membership in other groups. |
| Software Distribution | Distributes applications or files to computers using peer-to-peer data transfers as much as possible. Each agent can share with 5 other agents on the same local sub-nets to vastly speed up deployments and reduce contention on slow network links. (Not currently available) |
| Tools | External programs, batch files, powershell scripts, web queries, or python scripts that can run on agents or servers in response to events or scheduling. |
| Monitoring | Provides the ability to analyze collected data on the agent to determine if issues have occurred that need to be handled. Many specialized monitors are also available for watching servers like FTP, SMTP, LDAP, or simple TCP connections. |
| Maintenance Windows | Provides the ability to define time and message filters to prevent agents from monitoring, deploying packages, or collecting data. |
| Event Console | A web based event console allows one to view the events received from all the agents. |
| Message Processing | A message rule engine analyzes received event messages on the server to determine the action to take for each message. |
| Ticketing | A simple ticketing system that can be used by support staff to track work on any detected issues. |
| Notifications | A method of notifying people based on tools, severity, and team memberships. |
| Suppression | Ability to suppress notifications at the user, team, or computer level. Based on time and message field filters. |
| Custom Scripting | Many components allow for custom scripting by using Python code. This provides an extremely flexible way to enhance the product to make it do anything you require. |
| CMDB | A simple configuration management database that tracks information about computers. |
| Reporting | A reporting engine allows the administrator to create many different reports which users can view and schedule for regular execution. |
| Auditing | Every configuration change made to the system is stored in an audit table and can be restored instantly as needed. |
| Export and Import | All configuration elements can be exported to XML files and then be imported back into the same system or onto other systems. |
| Scheduling and Workload | Support for scheduling tools to run on the servers and agents will be added. Flow logic will also be created to have one tool triggered from the success or failure of a previous tool. (Not currently available) |
| Enterprise Scalable | Many primary and secondary servers can be combined together in a framework to span regional or business based geographies. Also works over the Internet and through proxy servers. (Not currently available) |
There are a few features that are not currently available and may not make it into the first release.