BACKGROUND

The main point of this project is to automate as much of the inventory process as possible, and make maintenance easy on the sysadmins. But certain information cannot be collected automatically and thus must be maintained in a reference file. This information consists of the hostname, rack location, serial number, and service contract number.

There are 3 pieces involved in the overall process: the reference file, the collector script, and the munger script. The collector script gathers information for each host listed in the reference file, and the munger script merges that collected information with the static reference data into a nice CSV table.

THIS TOOL

This utility serves the purpose of easily maintaining the reference file. It should be used whenever static changes are made to machines like hostname changes, location changes, or serial number changes.

INPUTS

• HOSTNAME should be self-explanatory. Just please make sure the hostname you enter is reachable over the network or the collector script will not be able to gather any information from the host. If the machine is temporarily out of commission but you would like to keep it in the inventory, please call it something in the form NONAME_CAL-J07_V240_2x2
  
• RACK: should be in the form CAL-H01 or NYC-B20 for machines in normal racks, or in the form CAL-STOR, NYC-STOR, NYC-LIVE for machines in various areas. For machines in racks, PLEASE try to follow the convention so sorting order is maintained. For machines not in normal racks, anything that will be intuitive is helpful.
  
• SERIAL should be fairly explanatory. If the serial is not known, please just use UNKNOWN. You can modify it later.
  
• CONTRACT is the Dell or Sun service contract number. If unsure, put UNKNOWN