Asset Management of Cables and Adaptors

[hayleyw1]

Hi,

Does anyone have any experience or recommendations for how to manage items such as Ethernet cables, HDMI cables, HDMI > DVI adaptors etc.? We want to be able record how many we have and how many are in use and how many are in stock and where. We initially thought about using the CI class of 'Computer Peripheral' and using category of 'Adaptor' and 'Cable' and sub-categories for the type of cable and adaptor, but not sure if this is the best way to do it!

Any guidance/advice/ideas/suggestions would be much appreciated

Thanks,

Hayley

[Tim Deniston]

Do you need to track them for Configuration Management or Asset Management or both? In most organizations, I would think they are only consumable assets and don't have a CI. If you need to track them more closely, Computer Peripheral is probably a good spot for the CI. The Asset class would probably be Hardware (as opposed to Consumable). There is a Type field on the cmdb_ci_peripheral table where you could add HDMI Cable, CAT-5 Cable, etc. Other choices in that list are Mouse, Keyboard, etc.

[hayleyw1]

Thanks for your response Tim!

Most will be for Asset Mgmt purposes and stock control, however there are likely to be instances where they would also be required for Config Mgmt. It sounds like Computer Peripheral would be the most suitable option.

With regards to your comment about the Type field on the cmdb_ci_peripheral table, we were going to create a Category for each type of peripheral and then a Sub-Category to further differentiate between types of peripheral. So for example....

Category: Keyboard

Sub-Category:

- Wired Keyboard

- Wireless Keyboard

Category: Cable

Sub-Category:

- HDMI

- VGA

- Ethernet

- DVI

etc.

Have you seen it structured like this before? And in your experience would it work? Or do most people use the 'Type' field and create additional options within this?

Thanks in advance

Hayley

[Tim Deniston]

I haven't seen a category/subcategory setup on the Peripherals table (or the CMDB, for that matter), but it works fine and is very common in Incident Management. I don't see why it wouldn't work for Peripherals.

Most organizations probably do not track keyboards, mice, and cables in the CMDB... it's just not a level of organization that provides value in most cases. Perhaps someone else in Community has done this and can provide some additional guidance.