Patent ID: 7506361
Filing Date: 2009-03-17
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method comprising: determining, by a computing device communicatively coupled via a network to a plurality of other devices comprising a plurality of server devices, a number and type of the other devices, by querying each of a plurality of network addresses of each of one or more subnets of the network to receive information from the other devices, the network addresses correspondingly assigned to the other devices; determining which of the other devices are the server devices, by determining whether the information from each other device indicates that the other device is one of the server devices, the information from each server device further indicating an operating system running on the server device; permitting a user to choose a selected number of the server devices via a graphical user interface, the selected number of the server devices being referred to as selected server devices, the selected server devices chosen by the user as having one or more of a common subnet and a common operating system; for each of the selected server devices, spawning a collector thread to collect information regarding the selected server device, the collector thread being executed on the computing device such that no computer-executable code is installed or spawned on the selected server device itself; sending requests to the selected server devices by the collector threads such that each collector thread sends a request to a corresponding selected server device, the requests sent to determine static configuration information, dynamic load-oriented information, and dynamic function-oriented information regarding the selected server devices, after the collector threads have sent the requests to the selected server devices such that responses including the static configuration information, the dynamic load-oriented information, and the dynamic function-oriented information regarding the selected server devices have been received from the selected server devices,