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Best Tools For Network Inventory Management?
jra writes "Once every month or so, people ask here about backups, network management, and so on, but one topic I don't see come up too often is network inventory management — machines, serial numbers, license keys, user assignments, IP addresses, and the like. This level of tracking is starting to get out of hand in my facility as we approach 100 workstations and 40 servers, and I'm looking for something to automate it. I'm using RT (because I'm not a good enough Web coder to replace it, not because I especially like it) and Nagios 3. I've looked at Asset Tracker, but it seems too much like a toolkit for building things to do the job, and I don't want my ticket tracking users to have to be hackers (having to specify a URL for an asset is too hackish for my crew). I'd prefer something standalone, so I don't have to dump RT or Nagios, but if something sufficiently good looking comes by, I'd consider it. I'd like to be able to hack a bit here and there, if I must. Perl and Python, along with C, are the preferred implementation languages; least favorite is Java. Anyone care to share their firsthand experiences with this topic, and what tools they use (or built) to deal with it? "
It's open source, it's free, it's a complete network management system, and you can import existing asset information as well as populate through network discovery. We use it here at the New Mexico Child Youth and Family Development Department, with 53 offices, 2500 workstations, and 80 servers.
http://opennms.org/
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Open Source use OpenNMS: http://www.opennms.org/wiki/Main_Page
Want commercial software?: Solarwinds Orion with IP Monitor.
We finally made our own. We created a mysql database and table schema storing the hardware information along with the schema for locations in the facility (typically cubicles, offices, labs, and server rooms). Wrote up a website using PHP with proper forms to insert new hardware, move hardware from one location to another, or remove hardware, and search functions to find hardware. We went a little further as well by getting floor and building plans and made clickable image maps for all the locations so that you can just browse to the building/floor/cubicle, see what is in there already, and add new stuff or move existing stuff etc., as well as have a way to highlight the location of a particular piece of hardware if you looked for it based on hostname, etc.
It really isn't that hard to do. And if you setup your database tables and schema correctly so that you can easily expand for new hardware types, buildings/locations, it isn't too hard to maintain. The hardest thing that we deal with is when we move into a new building and we have to generate the floor map, but it doesn't usually take more then a few hours at most.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
This might be the sort of thing, coupled with the OCNS agent it'll scan your network and log all the data into a myql database. Ticket system which allows users to report stuff attached to an asset, reporting, contracts, and stuff. Worth a look.
who keep tagging stories like these and especially 'Ask Slashdot' submissions with the domyjobforme tag, please STFU. Quite often, the submitter has done extensive research on the matter and shared his or her observations and is looking for people to share their ideas or experiences. Your attitude does not fit in with the open source spirit that the readers of Slashdot enjoy being a part of. If done as a joke, it is no longer funny.
Open-AudIT is pretty good for cross platform but it doesn't cover all of your requirements. I'm yet to find anything that is an IP database plus complete system inventory. Open-AudIT is very good at the inventory side. I run it in Windows since I was trying to replace TrackIT. There's a Linux agent and it'd be pretty easy to customize it for other OSes. It does licensing as well. Want to know how many computers have Office and what version? Who has outdated Antivirus? It even gives you license keys used. Getting it up and running with XAMPP for Windows is quick for testing. I haven't used it as much on the server side. We use IBM Director for that.
Nagios? For asset tracking? "I was trying to check my e-mail using using apache, and it just wasn't living up to my expectations at all...." I guess when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
http://www.open-audit.org/ does a nice job of tracking on the windows side. Set up xampp, unzip the contents of the openaudit zip file into the htdocs directory, visit the side, move on with your life. Open Audit as a project is a little hackish and informal for my tastes, but it does pass the JFW (just fucking works) test. Tracks assets, installed software, license keys. It's just a PHP frontend for WMI results, so if WMI is acting funny, then open audit will be funny too. I also doubt it'll do much for network device inventory other than identifying approximately what the device is. (Printers show up ok, I doubt switches or routers will appear as anything other than "other".)
My suggestion for integrating Nagios would be to set an action URL for each of your hosts that in turn points to the Open Audit page for that particular host, unless you're already using the action URL for PNP (and if you're not, you should be for some of your hosts.)
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Servers=static
Printers=static
network gear=static
random network devices=static
In any non-trivial network you will have a significant percentage of your IP space utilized by static devices. Then you get into tracking multiple sites and their associated network information and it starts to get fairly complicated. We're small enough with a couple dozen sites and a dozen or so subnets at our corporate campus that we use a multi-tabbed excel document with the first tab being a table of contents.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
There is no reason to add the dependency of a DHCP server to many of those services. Reserved DHCP works great under some situations but if you're talking about a static set of servers or equipment, static ip is more reliable.
Depends on your situation and your resources. A while ago I did a favor for a friend in a mid size office (300 people or so) lacking a real sysadmin where they asked me to re-ip the entire network on a short notice. Luckily I had the foresight to make sure just about everything was on DHCP or static DHCP. With renewal time lowered to 24 hours - this gave me a 12 hour window - perfect for overnight reset. During the day I wrote a quick script to dump out, massage and re-write the static IPs in DHCP DB. After everyone gone home that night, all I had to do is change IPs on a the few static servers (DHCP server mostly) - activate the new DHCP scope and go home. 1/2 hour worth of work. Next morning everything was up and running, and for the few people who complained(there are always a few), a reboot fixed everything.
So yes, static IPs are more reliable on small network or if you are well staffed and have time to burn. But there is value in static DHCP when you are understaffed. Of course it makes it much more important to keep the DHCP server up, but hey, you still have at least 1/2 your renewal time to fix it and hopefully you are monitoring your DHCP server.
-Em
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