asset management tools?

[Bair,Paul A.]

On Tue, 2006-02-28 at 20:54 -0500, Neil Joseph Schelly wrote:
> I'm looking to replace a spreadsheet listing all our servers with a web-based 
> asset management tool. I'm wondering what experience all of you may have with 
> the available tools out there.
> 
> Essentially, I want to be able to list servers and specify arbitrary 
> attributes for those servers as we have a number of inventory attributes we 
> keep track of that are rather specific to our use and I'm sure won't be in 
> any preselected group of attributes.
> 

This might not be what you're looking for, but this is how I keep track
of "alive" systems.  I run WebJob
(http://webjob.sourceforge.net/WebJob/index.shtml) on the systems I
manage and have implemented the "Harvest System Info" recipe
(http://webjob.sourceforge.net/Files/Recipes/webjob-harvest-system_info.txt) which produces a browsable repository of host-based information that can be viewed online or packaged up and disseminated as an archive.  The recipe is also extensible so that you can collect virtually anything from a system (such as the amount of physical memory on the system), then integrate it into the HTML reporting system. Here's some sanitized sample output of the OS report (truncated for readability):

SystemInfo OS Report
client_id os      os_release  os_version  machine processor memory
client1   FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE MYKERNEL #0 i386    i386      3963
client2   FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE GENERIC #0  i386    i386      2039
client3   FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE GENERIC #0  i386    i386      2043

In addition to the "OS report", you can call up reports based on the OS
release, OS version, machine architecture, CPU, and type of platform.
Another nice thing about the recipe is that I collect the information
periodically, so it's always up-to-date (within reason).

Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for.

Andy

> It would be nice to be able to attach files to server records, add an 
> inventory of spare parts (or effectively non-server items), track changes to 
> servers, and a make use of a user authentication system.  Those aren't 
> requirements, but would be pretty cool to have.
> 
> -Neil
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