Best Tools For Network Inventory Management? 251
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? "
OpenNMS (Score:5, Informative)
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/ [opennms.org]
Do you want it to be open source or not? (Score:5, Informative)
Want commercial software?: Solarwinds Orion with IP Monitor.
Open-AudIT (Score:3, Informative)
Asset Tracker for RT a toolkit? (Score:3, Informative)
Your description of AT is completely off. I'm an active user of RT and Asset Tracker (AT). It's not a toolkit at all, it's a clean modification that adds an 'Assets' link in the nav bar where you hold assets. From there you create and manage custom fields and custom field values from within the standard locations of RT. At no point must you know a URL to do anything in RT or AT. There are simple or complex searches, linking assets to others (depends on, requires, etc) is simply typing a few letters into a box to search on, then choose the appropriate action from a dropdown box.
Unfortunately there have been no releases of AT in a while, but it still cleanly applies even to the latest version of RT. It does have a new home for its code on google code [google.com] and is getting updates, just not a new release for a few years.
Re:you track your IP addresses? (Score:2, Informative)
Kwok and Open-AudIT (Score:2, Informative)
I have found Open-AudIT [open-audit.org] to be a good tool for tracking the 'soft' side of the house with minimal pain while
Kwok Information Server [kwoksys.com] was a better tool for tracking 'hard' assets. Both are open source.
Mod me down! Sharepoint! (Score:2, Informative)
Surely i will be modded down for suggesting a microsoft solution, but your problem is pretty simple to solve with a sharepoint server. Its free (there is a pay version as well), and if you have office and don't mind using IE, it integrates nicely. Plays OK with firefox, just cant do some advanced editing (spreadsheet view, some imports). Sharepoint is a bitch sometimes as its a microsoft product and thus designed badly, but there is certainly alot of support out there in the form of plugins and templates. It has a wide install base.
With sharepoint, you are basically creating lists of things, and linking them together. I think it works pretty well for basic record keeping, athough it does involve alot of data entry. One bonus is if you have all your data in excel, the import process is very simple. I would imagine that is the case with all solutions you would be looking at though...
Another bonus is that if you are using active directory, it is very easy to roll a helpdesk system, intranet site, and wiki at the same time, all in the same framework. Users can submit tickets themselves with their active directoy logins, so no need to manage multiple credential stores.
It may not be the best, but if you need to do it cheap and want integration with windows domains, you cant really go wrong with sharepoint. (cue replies telling me how wrong their sharepoint install went :))
Re:OpenNMS (Score:5, Informative)
I can agree that OpenNMS is a good choice. It contains most of the features you want for IT administration.
The only disadvantage I have discovered with OpenNMS is that it is a bit heavy on resources, so I would recommend a dedicated server for the monitoring.
OCS Inventory-NG (Score:3, Informative)
I've been using it on an old Linux box for over 3 years now and I'm pretty pleased with it. You need a Unix or Windows computer to act as a server; on Linux it's a basic LAMP stack plus some specific PHP and Perl modules, and on Windows it comes as one package that includes everything you need. Then you install the client software on each computer that needs to be inventoried. There are clients for Windows and generic Unix (Linux, *BSD, Solaris, Mac OSX, etc.).
It'll track IP address, hostname, MAC, what software's installed, username, whether it's on an Active Directory domain, subnet, all hardware including serial number. You can also configure it to use Nmap to have an auto-elected client in each subnet do a quick scan to determine what other devices are on that subnet and optionally try to detect what it is (Linux box, Windows box, printer, switch). It can also push out packages to clients.
If you want to expand some more, OCS also integrates with GLPI to provide helpdesk ticketing, license tracking, etc.
Re:Roll your own... (Score:4, Informative)
As I said with ours, since we have the building/floor maps, we do not let you physically type in a location, you have to click on the location from the maps. Again, this removes the chances of someone entering strange data. We do as much pattern matching/validity testing as we can do on the data to make sure it is correct, and have a verification page before data is actually input or changed in the database (with highlighting exactly what is changing). It also keeps a "history" of the hardware, along with who updated the data and when. It sounds a lot more involved then it is. A good schema for the database can easily take care of all these things. History is simply a table that is 3 fields, "id", "item_id", and "value", with "id" and auto increment primary key, item_id a foreign key which corresponds to the particular item, and value a text blob which stores HTML formatted text output of the fields that were changed, the old values, the new values, the date, and by whom. The information that gets placed in that is handled by the PHP webpage.
I think we have something like 6-7 tables in our schema. Separating anything that we wanted to keep uniform into its own table which we have an administration front end to modify or add to those tables (things like manufacturers, models, etc). Again the idea is to make as little as possible be up to the human inputting the data so that the data will be consistent which will allow you to actually search for things and be sure that you find all of them, and not miss something because someone made a typo when entering the manufacturer name.
It took probably 4 months from soup to nuts. But at the time, we had to compile everything from source code (something like a LAMP server wasn't really there yet, and you had to compile mysql, apache, and PHP to get them all to work properly back then). Now its a push of a button and it is basically done. In fact we had to compile the compilers before we could compile the LAMP software. A lot has changed in the last 10 years...
Re:you track your IP addresses? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, i would. Because then the ip information is always in one place - DHCP server - and there will be no conflicts and this information is *always* up to date. If a device needs a static address (e.g. a server or switch) i just assign it an IP address according to its MAC address in DHCP server. Everything else gets an address from the dynamic range.
Re:Do you want it to be open source or not? (Score:3, Informative)
And his 4-digit number is even lower than mine. :-)
Yes, I prefer open source, though I guess that wasn't necessarily discoverable from the "I'd like to be able to hack on it" comment.
I hadn't realized OpenNMS did that much inventoryish work; a dedicated server is no problem. I'll add that to my list.
The complete list (Score:3, Informative)
of sites for suggested packages is below. It will take me about a week to go through them all, but I'll try to get a posting up here next weekend closing the loop; thanks y'all.
http://opennms.org/
http://www.lanrev.com/
http://www.glpi-project.org/?lang=en
http://www.ocsinventory-ng.org/
http://www.open-audit.org/
http://www.kwoksys.com/
http://www.symantec.com/business/theme.jsp?themeid=altiris
http://www.spiceworks.com
http://www.belarc.com
http://www.i-doit.org/
http://opennetadmin.com/
http://www.zenoss.com/community/open-source-network-monitoring-software
http://www.komodolabs.com/
http://netdisco.org/
http://racktables.org/
http://www.staffandline.com/
http://www.invgate.com/
http://www.kiwisyslog.com/kiwi-cattools-overview/
http://pulse2.mandriva.org/
https://www.versiera.com/
http://www.netcraftcommunications.com/
http://openerp.com/