ILMT / SUA – REST API – Computer Systems attribute 'hardware_manufacturer'

Usage and Config BFI
1

Hello

I am currently retreiving computer data from a call to ‘/api/sam/computer_systems’, but some of the attributes returned are not what would be expected, especially the ‘hardware_manufacturer’

The ‘hardware_manufacturer’ is actually returning the BIOS manufacturer for WinTel systems, not the device manufacturer. So for example, I’m getting ‘American Megatrends Inc.’ instead of the actual computer manufacturer.

Is there any way to get the actual device manufacturer?

Cheers

Gary

2

Hello Gary,

There will manufacturer taken from BIOS.
One exception are physical computers created based on VM Managers scan (no endpoint installed on the BOX).
For them in hardware manufacturer field there will be information retrieved from specific virtual technology API.
For example for VMWare there will be hardware.systemInfo.vendor attribute from the specific API.

Regards,
Łukasz

3

You can query this information through the normal BigFix REST API instead of the SUA API.

4

Hello James,

Actually you can’t do it by BigFix REST API in case when there is no agent installed on the host.
In such case the only way to get information from host is ILMT/SUA REST API, because it is collecting data directly from VM Managers API.

Regards,
Łukasz

1 Like
5

Hello Lukasz

Thanks for the clarification.

I do think that having the BIOS manufacturer is a lot less useful than having the actual machine vendor. I can see that the VM Manager returns the actual machine vendor and model, which for me would be more useful for all devices.

In my opinion, knowing a device is a Dell, HP, IBM etc. would be far more useful than knowing it has an ‘American Megatrends’ BIOS installed. :smile:

Kind Regards

Gary

6

Hello Gary,

Information returned by ILMT/SUA depends on what it gets from VM Manager’s API.
About what virtualization we are talking about?
There should be of course returned manufacturer of host but it should be written in BIOS.

REgards,
Łukasz

7

Hi Lukasz

The information coming from the VMware VM Manager is correct, it shows the sever Make=‘Dell’ and Model=‘PowerEdge’.

The issues is with a physical Windows machine that is running the agent, it is showing Make=‘American Megatrends’ when it is a ‘Sony’ machine, while the model=‘VGN-FW3’ which is correct.

In Windows WMI on this computer:

Win32_BIOS.Manufacturer = 'American Megatrends Inc.'
Win32_ComputerSystem.Manufacturer = 'Sony Corporation’
Win32_ComputerSystem.Model = ‘VGN-FW3’

So BigFix Inventory is pulling in the BIOS manufacturer instead of the computer manufacturer into the ‘/api/sam/computer_systems.hardware_manufacturer’ attribute.

The following is the data for this device shown through the API:

{
	"id": 3,
	"parent_id": null,
	"type": "host",
	"os": "Win8 6.2.10240",
	"host_name": "LT00294",
	"dns_name": "pc01.domain.com",
	"ip_address": ["10.0.0.1"],
	"last_seen": "2015-10-14T14:50:06Z",
	"hardware_manufacturer": "American Megatrends Inc.",
	"hardware_model": "VGN-FW3",
	"hardware_serial_number": "00000000-1000000",
	"processor_type": "Multi-core",
	"processor_brand": "Xeon(R) or Pentium(R)",
	"processor_vendor": "Intel(R)",
	"processor_model": "All Existing",
	"partition_cores": "2.0",
	"server_processors": 1,
	"server_cores": 2
}

I hope that clarifies the issue.

Thanks

Gary

1 Like
8

I would recommend redacting the hardware_serial_number from the above.