Managing Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Deployments - SharePoint Inventory Assessment (
Page 2 of 3 )
The first tool, still being tested, is an inventory assessment tool; the other
tools are a SharePoint capacity planner, a cross-site configurator and a
SharePoint monitoring tool kit, all of which can be downloaded free of charge.
The inventory assessment tool allows IT administrators to discover and run
detailed reports on SharePoint assets, including servers, Web applications,
active features, folders, lists, documents and customizations. This tool was
designed to work without the use of agents, a choice Microsoft made after
hearing from customers, according to Manoel.
The tool functions by making a Windows Management Instrumentation call to
remote servers and, if SharePoint assets are discovered, then making a SOAP (Simple
Object Access Protocol) call to determine exactly what content exists on those
servers.
The tool then uses SQL Server reporting services to generate reports. Administrators
interact with the tool through a wizard that allows users to enter ranges of IP
addresses or limit searches to specific addresses.
The tool provides different levels of reports. At the highest level, it
provides the number of SharePoint servers and versions, modification dates, and
customization of SharePoint pages. That last item "bears relevance if
you're considering an upgrade of your version of SharePoint," Manoel noted.
The tool also reveals file extensions, which gives administrators an idea of
where storage growth is going to come from, he added.
However, the reports do not reveal document size, which is a limitation of
the SOAP-based system. "SOAP doesn't discover document size," Manoel said.
He said Microsoft plans to achieve that level of granularity in a future
iteration of the product.
The tool also provides a pre-migration inventory report—a file count broken
down into categories based on file type, and a topology inventory that shows
SharePoint versions installed on various sites.
Enterprise Applications 
