Syslist Inventory Software

Guess who forgot to hit the Publish button yesterday? Oops...

Okay, so I promised Tony that I would post after my company settled on an inventory system and so here it is.

For the non-geeks, beware of high technicality lurking in this here blogpost.

I chose Syslist as my inventory tool of choice. Now, when I did so, it was on two factors:

- Advanced web-based inventory

- Price

I was sold on the first half and the latter half sealed it.

Here's something that shocked the hell out of me: They have developed and include client executables for BOTH Windows and Mac to keep the client machines up-to-date in terms of inventory.

This means that when you change the IP address of a machine, it reports it. New RAM? It reports it. The reporting schedule is based on your own choosing. Currently my machines report back daily to the server.

I run the server on an Ubuntu LAMP box (it's an installation default option). I used this Ubuntu setup guide to help configure my box for access via SSH (for that I use PuTTY of course).

Once I got it up and running it was only a matter of time as I went from machine-to-machine and setup new hostnames (PCXXX, as we had no numbering scheme previously) and added them to the system.

Now I can say I'm satisifed with Syslist but I'm not overjoyed. Here's a few thoughts on the process and progress:

- Printer support sucks. Which is to say it's non-existant. At this point, with the networkability of printers, and their advanced use, we should have a completely new section for printers and their ability to be associated with machines.

I simply don't think of printers as a peripheral such as a mouse or a component such as RAM. Ugh. Quite simply, the printers are managed via spreadsheet right now because Syslist has a hard time with them.

- Client Machines need their own login. I made the mistake of giving each client the same login. The 'admin' login. Ugh. Don't repeat my mistake. Give them either a 'dummy' account with which to update or make a seperate login.

I am now tied to the admin password on Syslist forever and ever unless I come up with an automated way to change 20-ish clients (including machines that aren't always on the network such as laptops...argh).

- No room for expandability. I would love to put a "note" field for each piece of equipment where I had more than a single line form to use (i.e. a "textbox" form HTML object).

This is an area I think Syslist could really embrace their userbase and create a 'modules' type system for people who wanted to expand on their work.

You see, as a PHP/MySQL solution, they're pretty much in the open in terms of someone possibly stealing their code and using it elsewhere. However, by that same token, they are open enough to let the world see how they operate. Give the users some freedom to create upgrades/tweaks to their existing systems that are NOT broken by Syslist upgrades.

Anyway, that's the news on Syslist. While I'm not 100% satisfied, I don't have any other inventory programs to compare it to beyond the ones I downloaded and demoed for only a short while. For production use, it's not bad.

Next up in geekville I'm working with VMWare virtual machines and seeing how they work and how I could perhaps use them. Testing environments are fantastic to have, and I must say VMWare is about as professional as it gets. Very nice, and free is my favorite word.

You say you're sick of yourself
Well I'm sick of you too