Inventory Items by device type

[André Vieira]

Hi.

What do you think about put the "Inventory Items" tab inside each device type? Currently it's only by device. But for example, whenever a machine dies, our team removes the components so that they can be used on other machines of the same type. At this point, we add to a specific machine, since we don't have this feature. And it's ok, since we can visualize all the inventory items by the navbar menu.

But I think that this can be helpful, since instead of searching the right machine, to group all the inventory items for that type, can add directly to the device type.

Thanks

[Brian Candler]

I think there are two distinct threads of discussion here.

The first is whether Inventory Items should be related to a specific Device Type.  I'm not sure this makes sense - at least it would have to be a many-to-many relationship (e.g. a RAM DIMM can be used in many different types of device).

I did suggest that inventory items have their own "role" (#3087), which might be another way to meet your need for filtering inventory items.  The same issue discusses whether "inventory item types" might be another alternative, similar to "device types".  Or you could use tags, which they already have. 

The other is about keeping spares of inventory items.  Currently, inventory items cannot exist outside of any device.  You can't even move them between devices (#2233), so you can't have a fake device acting as spares repository, unless you delete them from one device and recreate them from scratch inside another device (tedious, and very error prone).

Netbox itself doesn't really work as an asset system, even if you add custom fields.  For example, if you have a device which fails and gets swapped out, you just update it with the new serial number of the replacement device; you lose the independent histories of the device with the old serial number and the device with the new serial number.  The alternative would be to create a new device complete with all its interfaces, and then you'd have to delete and recreate all the cables connecting the old device to connect them to the new device, which is too awful to contemplate.

So at the moment, I think it makes more sense to have an asset system separate to Netbox.  Then inside Netbox you add devices and inventory items referencing that system (using asset tag as the reference, which Netbox enforces to be unique).  In other words, the asset system tells you what assets you have/had and their purchase/disposal history, while Netbox tells you where each asset is installed *right now*

[Brian Candler]

I've created a new FR for "inventory item types": #3333

[André Vieira]

Hi Brian. Thanks for the FR.

I just have another way to put things that I think will resolve your issue, and my.

Why not create the "Inventory items" and "Inventory items types" as we already have for the devices.

I will try to explain a little better.

In "Inventory items" you will have the creation of inventory items in a way that you can put the inventory item to some device or multiple devices (like RAM's), none device (like some sensors) or a device type (as I explain next).

Something like this:

So, the site is the only requirement for the inventory item.

This way you have inventory apart from the devices.

And, about my question, to put some inventory items to the device type, apart to only the device, it's for example, some PCI's, or even power supplys. If I remove 3 servers that are dead, I want to save the inventory item (power supply for model XYZ) for the device type,

I do not know if I explained myself very well. So tell me if you have any doubts.

Thanks

[Brian Candler]

I think what you're asking for is for Netbox to become an asset registry, and the Netbox authors have explicitly said they won't do that.

Ignore inventory items for the moment, and just think about Devices.  A "Device" in Netbox is not really an asset.  The serial number and asset tag are mutable fields.  Now consider the case where a piece of hardware fails and you replace it with another piece of hardware.  In Netbox you just modify the serial number and asset tag to be the new device.  But in real life, the serial number and asset tag of an asset don't change; rather, you are using a different asset to fulfil the *function* of a device.

Some people on this list have suggested using Snipe-IT as as separate asset registry alongside Netbox, but I've not tried it myself.