nVentory 0.8

nVentory software is a hardware and configuration inventory manager, that will eventually output XML files, which can be used to define configurations in other tools and processes (such as software builds, cfengine configuration, Nagios configuration etc)

An application designed to assist the datacenter manager answer the following questions:

ï¿­ What servers do I have in my datacenter?
ï¿­ What is the function of server y?
ï¿­ Where is server x in the datacenter?
ï¿­ Which customer(s) is assigned to server y?
ï¿­ How much does server of type z cost?
ï¿­ How much memory does server type z have?
ï¿­ Which PDU does server x use, and which port(s)?
ï¿­ Which switch and switch port does server z connect to?
ï¿­ How many servers are in rack x?
ï¿­ How many servers are in state "need repair"?
ï¿­ How many servers are in state "ready to use"?
ï¿­ and more..


Product's homepage

Here are some key features of "nVentory":

· Web based management interface, with AJAX elements, written in Ruby on Rails
· Visualization of rack space, showing used space and free space
· Designed specifically to help hosting companies manage datacenter typical assignment tasks
· Future: will generate XML configuration files to be used in code/application deployment
· Future: model complex inter-node relationships like MySQL Multi-master replication

Requirements:

· Working Ruby on Rails setup, supported database
· Knowledge of how to deploy Rails applications (Rake/Capistrano)
· Currently deployed internally on Fedora Core 5 Linux, Apache, Mongrel, MySQL

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· SERVER Major update to nVentory, too many to list right now but off the top of my head: 1) Remove acts_as_paranoid - causing too much trouble. Even original author of that plugin stopped using it. 2) Revised the outlets MVC. Network type of outlet producer/consumer now relies on Nic=>Outlet instead of Node=>Outlet like the Power and Console outlets. Therefore Outlets model uses polymorphic table on the consumer_type field to see if is a Node type or a NetworkInterface type. 3) Added the ability to Register a node as a VMHost or VMGuest. Most of the support is written specifically for Xen architec ture. If using with CLI, you'll be able to register a VMHost and it'll automatically populate VMGuest member information. CL I --register will do all the work for you. 4) GraphViz support for NodeGroupNodeGroup hierarchies. The visualize node_groups link is in Node#show view. ServiceS ervice graphviz diagrams can also be generated. 5) Services MVC added , which are just object hierarchies depicting service dependencies (utilizing the node_group names). P robably need to explain this better will put in README. 6) Starling/Workling background processing of large CSV exports via GUI. ** Will email csv export to logged in user email address. 7) many many other little things to be documented at a later time. CLIENT version 1.2-1 1) ability to delete from CLI 2) --and allows you to compare ANDs for the same attribute. Prior, only ORs were possible within same attribute. Example: nv --get node_groups=web --and node_groups=db ** Will return nodes that is a member of node_group 'www-web' AND is a member of 'db-servers'. ** Prior OR query would give you a list of nodes that belong to one OR the other (or both) NOTE: AND functionality across UNLIKE fields don't need --and Example: nv --get name=testserver --and node_groups=db ** Will return nodes that match name '%testserver%' AND must be a member of node_groups 'Û%' 3) includes passed to nventory server via cli. Now you can search model associations with includes option 4) cisco switch port detection utilizing CDPR binary. Auto associate this consumer to an outlet & network producer 5) Xen virtual host/guest detection - automatically registers to VMHost via CDPR switchport detection OR if vm HOST will automatically register all Xen guests via `xm list` os comman