Asset Management Suite

Hi All,

Does anyone have any good ideas on how to setup racks within Altiris Asset Management?

I can see how it is done out of box with the 'Rack' CI, and 'Physical Rack' CI but that seems nasty - drilling into reports and CIs.

A use case scenario is:

1. IT Manager recieves a call/alert saying Server1 is down and needs a physical reboot

2. IT Manager finds  the asset in Altiris, and now needs to see 'at a quick glance' where it is so that it can be rebooted (they don't want to open up a slow report to get that information)

I have had a look at locations, and was considering create locations that hold that information e.g. city>building>floor>server room>rack1

Problem is that from the Activity Centre, you can't look at the location easily. You are forced to drill into Resource Manager which always takes a while to load, and even then when you look at it it won't give me detail - just the final location e.g. rack1 - not city>building>floor>server room > rack 1

REPORT: Also we probably need a report that will show server | location | rack | rack location

DESCRIPTION FIELD: Also for bonus points - how does the description filed work. Nowhere does it seem to be editable?

I'd like to know who else has done this, and how they currently setup/use/view racks please

Thanks :)

Hi Mike,

Which version of ITMS are you using? Latest 7.6 version is compatible with IE11 and it has improved performance a lot.

Also, there is a default report which you could use to check Rack assets and after going into Resource Manager, you check related servers/switches or other. Check below:

Also, you can base a new query from it. If you need, please let me know and I'll try to tweek it.

Regarding to "description" field, could you provide a better image? I did not understand which one you are referring to.

Regards.

Hi Rafael,

Thanks for your great comments.

We are running 7.5 SP1

What I'm trying to do is figure out the smartest way to setup racks and servers, so that information is quickly available 'At a glance'

The Managers don't want to have to open a report, and drill into it.

It seems to me the easiest way is to setup locations that map directly to a rack. You can see in the image I've created a locations called:

.Datacentre\Location1\Rack1

.Datacentre\Location1\Rack2

.Datacentre\Location1\Rack3

And by doing that I can easily find the server using the console, and then 'Resource Association Diagram'

Is this the smartest way to setup racks - so that they are user friendly, and so that we don't need to open a report to find a server location?

(sorry I blurred it out so as not to show the company but I hope you can understand it)

REPORTING: For the reporting side of it. We would like another simple view that could show - servername,os,ipaddress,rack,rack location

DESCRIPTION: I wanted to know if there is a field that is easily edited, or viewed from the Altiris console shown below. If there is then this could potentially be used to show location

Hi Mike,

At a glance, the only things I could think of:

1- Configuring Organizational Views and Groups in order to be populated alongside with your locations. Then, you will find the "Computer Resources" in Computer Views and Groups in the Activity Center organized by their specific Location/OG. (just like you configure, but automating as I will suggest below.)

2- Creating a custom view/webpart/page and inserting such information for searching. Maybe using a custom report, maybe using a new page published that you will need to develop.

Take a look here for example: 

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/web-parts-one-place-within-smp-console

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/videos/creating-webparts-reports

I don't think there is a simple field to fill with the location description. The user is going to need going through Managing Configuration Items or via reports, in order to check for the location of an asset.

Check out these articles: 

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/automatically-add-asset-location

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/assigning-asset-location

The smartest way to setup Location within Asset Management is mentioned in both. They mention using Subnet sync to populate location, so that you can use location awareness through your network specifics. Configuring Racks within Asset is just a matter of making associations and not exactly setuping up racks' locations in order to view where servers are. It can help you locating your servers, but through associations, only.

I created the custom SQL for the report you need:

SELECT DISTINCT
    vra.Name [Server],
    vc.[OS Name],
    vc.[IP Address],
    rack.[Rack],
    rack.[Rack Location]
FROM 
    vComputer vc 
    LEFT JOIN vAsset va ON va._ResourceGuid = vc.[Guid]
    LEFT JOIN vRM_Asset_Item vra ON vra.[Guid] = vc.[Guid]
    LEFT JOIN ResourceAssociation ra
    LEFT JOIN vRM_Computer_Type_Item vact
        ON ra.[ChildResourceGuid] = vact.[Guid] 
        ON ra.[ParentResourceGuid] = va.[_ResourceGuid]
    LEFT JOIN ResourceAssociation ra1
                                                LEFT JOIN (SELECT va._ResourceGuid [ID], vra.Name [Rack], val.Location [Rack Location]
                                                                FROM vAsset va    LEFT JOIN vRM_Asset_Item vra ON vra.[Guid] = va._ResourceGuid
                                                                LEFT JOIN vAssetLocation val ON va.[_ResourceGuid] = val.[_AssetGuid]
                                                                WHERE va.[Asset Type] = 'Rack') AS rack
        ON ra1.[ParentResourceGuid] = rack.[ID]
        ON ra1.[ChildResourceGuid] = va._ResourceGuid
WHERE
    vact.Name = 'Server'

I think it needs improving, but take a look in your environment and see if fits.

I hope those will help you.

Regards.

Thanks for those comments.

I created a report with the new locations column now, so that's handy thanks!

However I couldn't figure out how to make your rack query work? I added in as a new report. Does it only have that query string and nothing else? My query always comes up blank.

Locations to subnet

I definately intend to do that. I've attached a logical diagram from my detailed design doc, just change the name a bit. key things to note:

1. PC LOCATIONS: All locations will be assigned a linked subnet (based on what I can see in DHCP console). Before you mention it - no we cannot use AD Sites and Services, cause they don't match up correctly

2. Eastside is the HQ, and will have NO linked subnets - instead I want to link various other subnets that reside in the Eastside Campus. Originally I wanted to link by building and floor, but that is not possible because of the vlan spagetti we have. e.g.  192.168.160.0 goes to three buildings, and so does WiFi. When people want to view what's in Eastside, the will esentially see it by clicking on Eastside - the subnet locations are just a bonus; the only issue with this is it doesn't tell us which building it's in, and there are three buildings; the only way I can think to fix this is through a physical audit, 

3. SERVER LOCATIONS: I want to create a seperate 'Location' called .Datacentre (so it shows at the top of the browse list), and put the associated datacentres underneath that. Then create addtional locations that match the actual Rack name as shown. By doing this it will easy to view the rack location as shown in the previous screen shots I've showed, and it is easily viewed through lots of out of box reports etc

4. The .Datacentre location will ONLY have manually assigned assets - this is becuase it will not easily be possible to link subnets to racks, or rack locations

What are your comments on this please?

Hi Mike,

I think I know why the query is not working. I put a condition in the WHERE clause, meaning this query will bring only servers and what racks they are configured into. I don't exactly know if that's what you need it, but you can always tweek it a little.

And for the query to work, you have to configure the computer type of your assets, see it below:

I guess you have everything pretty much figured it out. In order to resolve the Eastside situation, you can take a look in this article https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/organizational-groups-and-permissions to help you achieve what you need. You will configure automation policies that will run on a schedule and put assets in the Organizational Groups of your choice, but you will need to have some parameter in order to distinguish these assets, maybe an asset tag.

Regards.

Hi Rafael, 

Thank you that definately fixed the query thanks! 

And thanks for all those links, they have all been useful.

But it raised another interesting point about how that 'computer type' field gets filled out? In my lab I have a Server (vmware guest) and a Windows 7 (vmware guest). and neither of them had it?

I thought it would have automatically been populated through the SMA?

Hi Rafael, 

One more point I'd like clarified regarding locations please:

If I create a location with a linked subnet, and then create a child location with no linked subnet it seems that any computer belonging to that parent locations subnet will always reattach itself to the parent location after the 'update network resource location' task runs.

so to illustrate:

Eastside (subnet=none) > Building 1 (subnet=none) > Level1 (subnet=192.168.1.0/24)  > Room 1 (subnet=none)

If I manually add a computer with the IP Address 192.168.1.11/24 to the location 'Room 1' then it always reassigns itself back to the parent which is 'Level1' (after update network resource location' task runs)

The impact of this, is that I can't do a manual audit and assign computers to sub locations (e.g Room 1, Room2, Room3, etc.) UNLESS I unlink the subnet? because they always return back to the parent subnet. However, once I unlink the subnet, from that day forth, everything will need to added to a site manually!?

This seems to me to be a common issue? Can you please advise smartest way to deal with this issue?

No, it is not populated by inventory.

In order to achieve this automatically you need to configure a CMDB Rule.

Here's an example:

You can set a SQL Query in "Expression" as well. Don't forget to set a schedule.

Regards. 

I have seen you created another forum for that, https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/altiris-ams-locations.

Hey, if any of these posts helped you, could you please mark as Solution? 

Thanks a lot.

Thanks for all your comments and links.

If anyone is interested, I think there was a fundamental design problem with my original locations in that the structure was too flat, I have redesigned it so it has two root nodes: datacentre, and pcs.

Datacentre devices will all be manually added (servers very rarely move), and will also have racks created as locations. This solves the problem described above when trying to find the rack a device is in

PCs will all be linked to subnet - and by definition also be manually added. 

It looks roughly like this:

oopps not good language i've used above it should say:

PCs > These locations will all be linked to a corresponding DHCP subnet - which means that all PCs will automaticaaly be added for each location (after the 'update network resource location', and the 'update org hierarchy' server tasks have run)