Tracking status for disks as inventory items?

[Matt Bostock]

Hello,

We're heavy users of Netbox and I'm working on automating our disk replacement process. I'd like to track disks in Netbox and be able to mark a disk as 'needs replacement'.

It seems that the best way to do this currently would be using inventory items, though they don't currently support a status field (nor custom fields).

Is anyone doing something similar, and would a PR likely be accepted to add a status field to inventory items?

Thanks,

Matt

[Brian Candler]

The problem is that inventory items in Netbox do not exist as standalone items.

- you cannot remove an inventory item from a device and retain it (you can only delete it)

- you cannot move an inventory item from one device to another device; you can only delete it from A and recreate it in B

- you cannot have a spare inventory item, i.e. one which is not associated with a device

- you cannot track inventory items as long-lived assets: e.g. date purchased, date warranty expires, history of removal between devices, history of return to vendor for refurbishment etc.

At the moment, your best option might be to maintain a separate database or spreadsheet of disks, and just use the inventory items feature in Netbox as a pointer to an entry in that database, indicating where the item is currently installed.

[Matt Bostock]

Thanks for your reply Brian.

I think I'll look for a separate solution for this kind of asset management.