jantman

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Hello,

At the moment, I'm running OCS Inventory-NG (http://ocsinventory.sourceforge.net/) for systems inventory. Aside from a few issues regarding improper detection of RAM in a few Windows clients, I find it very useful for the most part. I'm able to keep track of about 10 on-site machines, as well as a few remote machines, and have it all updated automatically.

However, I'm just in the process of upgrading and replacing a few servers. What I really want is a way to track failure, replacement, and retirement of individual components (including dates, reasons and serial #s) as well as entire machines.

Furthermore, while OCS is great for the majority of tasks, I have a few embedded systems which I'd like to store in the database, as well as adding my switches, UPSs, and other infrastructure.

Any recommendations?

I figure there are 3 possibilities:
1) Find something to totally replace OCS that has all of the automatic update features of OCS plus the ability to track replacements/upgrades of individual components, device status (production, backup, retired, etc.), and non-computer infrastructure components (switches, UPSs, etc.).

2) Find something to handle the hardware history and infrastructure components, and use it in addition to OCS

3) Pray that OCS is written in PHP or Python and uses MySQL, and code in those additions myself.

Any suggestions?

farslayer

if you are looking to track your entire infrastructure you might want to take a peek at nagios it's more for notification of failures etc in real time, so it would be in addition to your inventory system.
http://nagios.org/

another project that includes network hardware for inventory..
http://freshmeat.net/projects/irm/
Don't know how this compares to what you are currently using but it' something you can take a look at..

jantman

I already run Nagios and Cacti for monitoring.

I currently use OCS inventory (ocsinventory.sourceforge.net) for keeping track of machines, as it has automatic update clients. However it won't work with most embedded systems, has no options for switches, routers, UPSs, etc. and doesn't track changes (If I swap drives, I want to be able to track a specific drive). I tried GLPI which is supposed to integrate with OCS, but am having some issues with it, beyond the fact that I don't like its layout.

I might just end up writing something myself, as OCS keeps all of the records in a PHP database.