| Documentation software from Ecora a short impression |
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| Written by Hans Straat, Saturday, 02 September 2006 | ||||||
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On brainmadden forum a guest posted a link to free documentation softwarepackage from the company Ecora. As I work all the time with citrix I got curious about the package and what it actually can do. I started with installing the package and ran right away into a problem with the outcome not showing good on the screen, a big red cross indicating a error with publishing the outcome good on my computerscreen. After a brief mail exchange I got the hint to install MS Virtual Machine and walla it worked like a charm. Darn thing is Microsoft decided to not publish the java virtual machine anymore but heck we got it here in our download section :) so good news we are in business. The installation is easy and after giving the required information to obtain a free license for the Lite edition I went looking around in the software package. The Lite edition can only do documentation what is published etc. NOTE: This review is about the freeware part of Ecora documentation software. A later review will also cover the parts you have to aquire a license for! Well let's get started with the documentation part of Ecora software, this is after all the freeware part we can use for nothing (that always sounds good in the ears of a manager). The first thing we are doing is making a documentation scan of the server(s). Names of the servers will be wiped for security reasons ofcourse :) Figure 1 shows the default installation of the citrix lite module. Nothing has been done yet. To get the documentation rolling press the Document button. A new screen will popup see figure 2 Figure 1
At figure 2 we selected the Full report (All citrix metaframe data) and got on to figure 3 Figure 2
You can make a documentation from already gathered information or collect new data. Well since this is the "first time" firing it up we collected new data. See figure 4 Figure 3
Ofcourse all information about email addresses etc is wiped :) You can change the logo the suite your own logo on the output form btw. That would impress some people at your job. Figure 4
Selecting the farm depending on how many licenses you got. We got 3 full trail licenses for a period of a month. Time enough to figure stuff out don't you think. Select your server(s) (with the lite edition you don't need licenses to document your servers. this is only needed for the other components like baseline compare etc) Figure 5
After the gathering is done you can view the reports. We unmarked it and returned to the normal Ecora window. Now you see that the package has gathered information about the selected servers. See figure 6 Now the interesting part comes up. What is actually documented. Figure 6
You'll see that it actually documents the entire farm. The output is either in html or in a .doc format. If you have Microsoft Visio installed on your system were the documentation is done on you can also let Ecora make a visio drawing from it. Figure 7
Well as you can see you get a lot of stuff about your farm documented. Actually the whole deal which pleases us very much. This would save a system engineer tons of time to document the system. Simply take a scan of the farm and you have documentation per server. Figure 8
If you go for instance to "Installed Software" in the right pane a text simular to what is following will apear. Installed Software
Platform: Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Table 1.199 Installed MetaFrame products Product Version Language MetaFrame Server Product: MetaFrame Presentation Server, Enterprise Edition. If you go deeped into "Installed Software" like Figure 9 you actually get a list of all installed packages , who has installed them and when.
Let's take the PSE400W2KR02 package under the loop. You see the "installed by:" part that is pretty important if you have multile administrators on your farm. No more finger pointing who did what it's pretty simple who installed the package. Also it gives you a load of information about the package itselve. PSE400W2KR02
Installed by: Domain\Username. To come to a conclusion. I would defenitly recommend this part of Ecora documentation software. Personally I am gonna use it to document the entire farm (yes I am lasy). Next review about Ecora will be the part were you need license for. The baseline reports Change Reports Consolidation Change log reports Also the Cross platform reports will be covered. Give us some time to figure it all out, the package is impressive but we need some time to understand all the goodies and we want to write a good and honest review about it. So far so good. that was it folks. Hans Straat
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