inventory / configuration management tools

[Dan Langille]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Tom Judge <tom at tomjudge.com> wrote:
> Dan Langille wrote:
>>
>> Are you using a configuration management tool?  If so what?
>>
>> I don't mean a tool to manage /etc/rc.conf (for example).
>>
>> What I'm looking for is something to keep track of all the hardware,
>> where it's installed, mac addresses, etc.  There has to be some kind
>> of API into it so we can plug utilize our existing processes,
>>
>> We are looking at http://onecmdb.org/ but I'm wondering about other
>> options.
>>
>>
>
> Hi Dan,
>
> We use OCS-Inventory NG,  it works reasonably well and supports most OS's.

For the archives: the inventory system makes use of an agent to obtain
details such as RAM, HDD, etc.  The system also contains a package
deployment solution.  The agent seems to run on a wide variety of
systems.  It reminded me of Nagios and its nrpe.

I don't see the ability to collect assets into racks, figure out what
ports on box A are connected to what ports on box B.

Not to diminish the capabilities of the system, this seems like a very
good solution for administering an office network.  It does not seem
to have anyway to group systems into racks.  For us, this is a key
requirement.

> There is an API for it and it integrates with the helpdesk system that we
> chose for our internal helpdesk (GLPI).
>
> Not sure if this is quite what you are looking for,  but it will automate
> the data collection part for you.

That looked very powerful.

Thank you.

-- 
Dan Langille
myYearbook.com