Ask HN: How do you keep track of the hardware and software used in your company? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you keep track of the hardware and software used in your company?

5 pointsgoldie_7 comments

For companies that have over 100 servers (for example), do you use software to track the servers and their relation to a product or service? I'm not referring to desktops and applications, but somewhere where you can manage that the finance system consists of these 12 servers, 2 web services and this software.

In ITIL 3, this was a CMDB (Configuration Management Database).

For 'enterprise', there are solutions from Service Now, BMC and IBM. But these are very complex and very expensive. What are some solutions for small to medium companies that can't justify using enterprise software for this?

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I've used Device42[0] in the past and found it pretty good for asset tracking. It can map software to hardware and manage software relationships. It's a datacenter manager first though. That said, it's been a couple of years since I used it and I hardly scratched the surface of it's capabilities. It was reasonably priced, IIR.

[0] https://www.device42.com/

Thanks cweiss, haven't heard of device42 before. Having a look now. Seems light it might be what I am looking for.

It depends what you mean by used. I wrote a system which learns what things are discussed:

https://metacortex.me/

If it's discussed it is tracked. A simple demo is: https://hnprofile.com

If you're intested in tracking software there is data dog (I believe it's called). It logs running software

https://snipeitapp.com

Thanks for sharing

What I am looking for is more at a data centre level I guess that maps the infrastructure to the services provided. For example, Service 1 uses Server A and Server B. Service 2 uses Server B and Server C.

Then, once you have everything mapped out, it is easy to see when planning what services would be impacted if we wanted to upgrade Server B to a new operating system. We would know that we need to check compatibility for both Service 1 and 2, and not just focus on Service 1 and be reminded that Service 2 uses the same server only when something goes wrong!

you might be able to use https://netbox.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ as a base

I use AirTable for something similar. It's like excel on steroids & let's you "link" cells of data to one another. Kind of a low-tech solution but depending on the scope of your project it could work.

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