Managing Router and Switch Inventories?

JabbaTheFart asks: "How does the Slashdot community deal with network equipment inventories. After searching Slashdot and seeing this post, I found a few good projects that work with computers (such as IRM, Request Tracker) but they don't cope with the specifics that you would need to work with routers and switches like: port info, firmware versions, currently running config, and so forth. I have looked into network monitoring projects like NMIS, Orion, and others but I would still need regular management information like serial numbers, contract status, price, etc. A simple database could work, but it would be nice to have web access. What do you use to keep track of all that network equipment that you are in charge of?"

Comments

Altiris - Network Management Solution

[chopkins1]

Altiris' Network Management Solution is supposed to do all that and more. Go to www.altiris.com and you can get a 30 day eval of the product Suites - requires a machine with 1gb or more of memory and SQL server as a back end.

Best of Luck.

Depends on what hardware you have...

[karnal]

I would bet money that the "big players" all have their own management/tracking/response software.

That being said, our workplace uses Epicenter - Extreme Networks' monitoring software. It does all that you've asked for. As well, we also use SNMP and a common event logger - so that any errors and configurations automagically show up in our centralized network control.

Seriously, if you have a big enough shop, you should probably be centered around one vendor for a solution for switches, and there should be management tools for those. Of course, this tends to work not-so-well for those who have linksys switches all over the place... but then again, you wouldn't need firmware revs etc for dumb switches.....

You need RTx::AssetTracker

[cjsnell]

You should check out RTx::AssetTracker, an asset management extension to RT. Like RT, you can easily create custom fields to hold your router configs, firmware versions, etc.

Demo here.

InTrac

[knewter]

DISCLAIMER: Yes, it's a plug, but it seems like it's worthwhile given the lack of useful tools listed in this thread.

I'm one of the programmers at http://www.inline.com/, and we developed an application called InTrac that we sell that does basically this. It's not as full-featured as our internet department (the router dealers-with) would /like/ it to be, but it's much better than what they had previously (spreadsheets, which proved to be entirely unscalable). It allows for asset types to be defined, which have specific criteria associated with them (various field types available). It also supports ticketing, with tickets assigned to assets. It was built with both ticketing and asset tracking in mind (tickets will have different fields based on the asset type, as well...this makes it easy to get those helldeskers to ask appropriate questions).

One big benefit I find when using InTrac (because it's used for all kinds of assets, not just routers - web sites, web hosting, SQL database information, etc.) is that I can oftentimes solve a problem quickly just by looking through the ticket history for the asset. It's obvious, and any ticketing system will allow you to do this, but we had HEAT previously, and that's why we built InTrac (that and a need for centralized asset management...but if HEAT's ticketing had worked as well as it should have, we wouldn't have developed the software most likely)...

Anyway, if anyone's interested in more information they can either contact myself or use the contact information listed on the website.

RANCID is your friend

[joliet convict]

http://ftp.shrubbery.net/rancid

Will store your configs including SW versions in a CVS tree. You could easily parse this stuff and dump it into a DB.

Netdisco.

[mor70]

http://netdisco.org/ Does network discovery and layer 2 topology.