Summary
In this module, you've learned how to use the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) toolkit to automatically scan the servers in your organization. MAP lists the number of SQL Server instances, with their versions and editions. You've also learned how MAP lists the components installed on each instance, along with the operating systems, processors, and cores.
You learned how to use the MAP assessment reports to filter your results, finding servers with the oldest SQL Server versions, and highest number of databases. You also used the reports to filter databases by size, and enabled options.
You learned how to use the toolkit as the first step in upgrading your databases, but you learned that the toolkit has many other uses because of the range and variety of data it gathers on the services running in your organization. SQL Server and other infrastructure, such as Exchange and Microsoft 365 servers can all be audited, far extending the use of this tool.
The MAP toolkit collects inventory information in a methodical and reliable way, and is highly beneficial to organizations running more than a handful of servers. It would be too time consuming for a database administrator to log in to several machines to find the same data that the MAP toolkit collects and maintain it on a regular basis. This scenario would also run the risk of generating inconsistent information.