Server Inventory question for multi platform environment

[Daniel Matthis]

I am starting to do research for an inventory/tracking system for our servers and equipment (network gear). Seeing as many of you are in 500+ server environments and multiple OS I am curious how you tackle this and if you use any specific software?

Currently I am looking at Rackwise and Aperture, but I am very open to anything that could lend order to my inventory environment. Yes, I know both of those products are more Data Center Management which is inventory plus other features but I'm trying to look at a broad range and narrow down it down.

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- Daniel

[Glenn Robuck]

I'd be interested in what everyone uses as well.  When we went through this a while back we didn't find anything that really worked for us so we ended up custom designing a web based system, but like everything else it's still not exactly what we want.

The closest thing we found that we liked was OCSinventory, it's agent is the best that I've found, and what we based our system off of, but it didn't have a rack diagram like we wanted.

Glenn

[Kit Peters]

We did OCSinventory while I was at Standard Beverage.

KP

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GPG public key fingerpint: 1A12 04B6 0C80 306A B292  14FD 2C7A 1037 F666 46A7

[Scott Kahler]

I'm using the assets function in OpenNMS to track what I've got. While detection of the gear is automatic population of the specific hardware data isn't. I'd also like to find a better system.

Scott Kahler

[Jeff T]

While not a free/FREE product, and probably not even cheap, I use
IBM's Tivoli Provisioning Manager to track and manager our servers.
This product scans and stores the configurations of the servers. The
best part is how it can be used to manage the servers. It is the most
flexible tool that I have come across in that it allows you to do what
you want and how you want. (Most provisioning and automation tools
have a set approach that you must adapt to.) I have been working with
it for a couple of years and we are probably only using a small
percentage of its feature set.

It supports numerous Operating Systems, we currently are using it to
manage Solaris, AIX, Red Hat, and our storage arrays. (I have heard
of other companies using it to manage everything from network devices,
to controlling buildings' power and lights.)

We use it to automate the building of Server OS, allocation of storage
from the filer, mounting of file systems, user creation, software
installation and configuration. Probably one of the most interesting
projects I have ever worked on! (Post automated host build, it takes
about 15 minutes for it to take a blank OS to the point of being ready
for the dba/developer to do their thing.)

[gladi...@gmail.com]

On Jun 26, 10:52 am, Jeff T <thetorch...@gmail.com> wrote:
> While not a free/FREE product, and probably not even cheap, I use

> IBM's Tivoli...

Oh no. Stop there. Do you work for IBM? You must... well.. at least
own controlling stock in them or *something* to be pushing Tivoli.
Tivoli isn't an "Oh, let's install it and click some buttons and we'll
all go to lunch and something useful will happen when we get back"
sort of thing. It's what evil Sales Droids(tm) call: An Environment.
It means you pay 10s of 1000s of rice bales just to have the privilege
of installing the software so you can realize that you don't have the
first clue what you're doing and call the vendor back and pay them
thousands of dollars in consulting fees to send someone in (Tivoli
Certified Magician... er... Technician) to spend about as much time as
it takes for the systems you care about to turn into systems that you
no longer care about to actually do what you wished could've been done
when you still cared about them.

By the time this occurs, the erm... proprietors of The Environment
will inform you that the version you have evidently been successfully
using (well, you haven't gone out of business yet, have you) is no
longer supported on the platforms you currently care about and that
you need a New Environment...

/wrists

Stephen
aka
Tivoli Refuge #4,188,247,033

[Jeff T]

Nope, I have no vested interest in IBM or Tivoli. I agree that this
is not a small simple application. It is a comlex application that
you don't simply install on a whim. That said, if you are looking to
automate the management of a diverse complex environment, then you
need something consideriably more advanced than shell scripts and a
spread sheet. (Also keep in mind, that IBM has numerous products
under the Tivoli name. My suggestions were specific to provisioning
manager.)

When choosing the right tools for the job, this isn't a hammer or a
sledge. In the beginning it may seem more like a wrecking ball. Now
it only takes minutes to solve problems that would have taken hours or
days without this product.

We looked at every product we could find from those claiming to be for
automated provisioning to various packages for managing large
clusters, including numerous inventory systems. Nothing even came
close to meeting our needs except for TPM. But thats IBM, they will
sell you their solution for any and every problem. It just so
happens, that their product was better than anyone elses, including
what we could reasonably create in-house.

Jeff T

[Steve Nordquist]

Yes, Tivoli has some discovery proclivities, but it also has corner
cases which fail global results (e.g. number of machines in a domain)
in the thousands, a license that rhymes with 3k, and a footprint in
gigabytes for ping toy uses. Dynamic as in oft-deprecated manuals.
Mmm, I'm not out of awk one-liners that cost under $4000 yet, or tools
that toughen LDAP traffic, but if I need to obscure the extent of an
asset and VMware are on vacation....

[sees Jeff's reply] So, what kind of model of cluster do I want to
consider with this wrecking ball for making future moves with it look
intentional, anyhow?
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/prov-mgr/

[Daniel Matthis]

Steve, 

So what do you use currently for tracking/inventory of your servers and network equipment?

-- Daniel