Asset tracking plugin and Cacti - your thoughts

[MagicOneXXX]

Recently I posted in the MacTrack forums regarding some sort of Asset-tracking synchronization with Cacti. I feel that this sort of plugin may extend beyond just Mactrack, so I'm posting here to get more feedback.

I'm interested in seeing/programming a plugin that will allow for some data sharing and possibly some functionality between Cacti and an Asset-tracking package. At the moment I'm looking heavily at GLPI (http://glpi-project.org/spip.php?lang=en) which is a pretty robust and clean package.

Here are some thoughts:

Rogue device detection. When a device is discovered through Discovery or Mactrack, it is compared to the asset database. Anything that isn't in asset tracking throws some sort of alert or report.

Asset/Cacti Auto-importing Devices that aren't in one database can be added automatically to the other. For instance, if there is a network device that I want to track in Cacti and it's in my Asset DB, I'd like to be able to click "add" and have all the information automatically entered. This can work the other way, adding basic information into asset-tracking, from plugins like Discovery.

Weathermap Autobuild In GLPI at least, you can 'connect' one device to the other VIA network ports. With this in mind, a plugin could probably build a weathermap by simply asking the user which devices he/she wants to map, then reads the database and builds a weathermap based on it.

Event/Trouble correlation A method of taking graphs/information in cacti and submitting it with trouble/help desk tickets and generating a report.

Those were just some ideas.

I'm interested in hearing some feedback. I don't know what many people here use for Asset-tracking, or if anyone has any other ideas they'd like to share.

[egarnel]

Recently I posted in the MacTrack forums regarding some sort of Asset-tracking synchronization with Cacti. I feel that this sort of plugin may extend beyond just Mactrack, so I'm posting here to get more feedback.

I'm interested in seeing/programming a plugin that will allow for some data sharing and possibly some functionality between Cacti and an Asset-tracking package. At the moment I'm looking heavily at GLPI (http://glpi-project.org/spip.php?lang=en) which is a pretty robust and clean package.

Here are some thoughts:

Rogue device detection. When a device is discovered through Discovery or Mactrack, it is compared to the asset database. Anything that isn't in asset tracking throws some sort of alert or report.

Asset/Cacti Auto-importing Devices that aren't in one database can be added automatically to the other. For instance, if there is a network device that I want to track in Cacti and it's in my Asset DB, I'd like to be able to click "add" and have all the information automatically entered. This can work the other way, adding basic information into asset-tracking, from plugins like Discovery.

Weathermap Autobuild In GLPI at least, you can 'connect' one device to the other VIA network ports. With this in mind, a plugin could probably build a weathermap by simply asking the user which devices he/she wants to map, then reads the database and builds a weathermap based on it.

Event/Trouble correlation A method of taking graphs/information in cacti and submitting it with trouble/help desk tickets and generating a report.

Those were just some ideas.

I'm interested in hearing some feedback. I don't know what many people here use for Asset-tracking, or if anyone has any other ideas they'd like to share.

I like the weathermap autobuild idea. Have you looked at how nedi builds maps?

[MagicOneXXX]

Actually, i've never seen Nedi until now. At a quick glance, it looks like it builds maps based on MACS that it polls through, what i'm guessing, is SNMP-based. This looks pretty close to what Mactrack is doing, just in graphical form.

Well, you got me scratching my chin now

[MagicOneXXX]

I will begin writing a basic Asset tracking plugin sometime this week. It won't have all the functionality right away, but at least it will be a start.

Still looking for suggestions on Asset tracking databases everyone would like to see added to this sort of plugin.

[gandalf]

Just my two cents:
- Devices running net-snmp with support for HOST MIB would fill information about installed software in the MIB. So you may retrieve information about installed software from there. YOu'll find the installation date as well
- This data should be stored into a new cacti table, e.g. "Installed Software Table"
- I'd prefer to check this "cryptic" information against a "Software Repository Table". This one might be imported (e.g. on a day by day base) into cacti to avoid product dependant API stuff. Accessing this table should be done by joining the "Installed Software Table" with this table
- This will allow for "check, if software is know to repository
- You may add additional rows to the "Repository Table", apart from the name that should match the SNMP information; e.g. Vendor, ... So you may add more information to a list of installed products
- You may display this info e.g. for each host, along with a filter to allow for easy matching software names
- It should be possible, to perform a join over all hosts for a specifc software to get sth. like "installation overview" for that software

Hope, I made myself clear enough.
As a last thought: It should really be discussed, whether such a feature is a valid cacti extension, as cacti is defined as a "rrdtool frontend". And of course, all this stuff has nothing in common with rrdtool graphing ...

Reinhard

[MagicOneXXX]

Sorry, little confused as to your post.

I didn't mention anything about tracking software, so I don't see how your post applies. Did you reply to this thread by accident?

If not, then i'd like to clarify that the point of asset-tracking isn't to track assets from within Cacti, but rather to tie together information and to allow some cross-functionality, such as mass-importing devices from your Asset DB, Updating your Asset DB with discovered devices, performing rogue device detection (from Discovery/Mactrack), etc.

Also, I think it would be useful to graph information from Mactrack regarding the number of used ports/MACs/Rogue devices, etc. for tracking purposes.

Please advise.

[Howie]

I like the weathermap autobuild idea. Have you looked at how nedi builds maps?

I've been thinking about automapping a bit lately. I was thinking about doing it using interface IP/netmasks to figure out which things were in the same subnet (and therefore connected). That data is already in Cacti as far as I know (haven't looked too closely yet). The hard part is at the 'edges' of the network, deciding which interfaces are important or not.

For example, customer routers aren't in our Cacti, but the interface on our edge router that faces them is. Some of those are big customers that we'd want to map, but a lot of them will be 1M SDSL lines that we don't really need to see (most of the time). They don't look any different from the interface table, really.

Of course, making a nicely laid out map is a problem too, but the automapper could have a reasonable first guess, with all the TARGET, INFOURL and OVERLIB lines added, ready for you to start deleting things, I reckon.

There's a tool that works in this way (not for weathermap) on the ISC site:
http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp. ... oolmakers/
and a paper about using it (amongst other cool network admin/Unix things):
http://www.nanog.org/mtg-0210/ppt/stephen.pdf

It reads Cisco config files, and uses a series of awk scripts to produce topology maps. It's easy to extend to other text config formats (I made a quick Nortel BayRS hack, and another for ExtremeWare), and produces OK maps. Graphviz does the nice layout for you.