Normally, hardware principal called it "Preventive Maintenance" process.
It is subject to hardware and OS and the tool is different.
For IBM AIX + System P hardware, the function call "syscfg.sh" and output is "syscfg.html". After output, customer engineer (CE) will upload into internal website to check the firmware, patches, fileset by tool.
For Sun OS + hardware, the function call "system explorer + GUDs", after the data collection, upload into internal website to get some advice.
Dell server has one tool can be downloaded and running both Windows and Linux platform, send back result to Dell support to give u some advice to follow up.