Hey there
I am looking for a tool recommendation for network and server asset management which can scale in multiple sites and integrate with other platforms like nagios, librenms. Being able to do patch management is plus. Mostly linux and juniper shop
Any recommendations?
Do you really want asset management tools, or configuration management tools with asset discovery / inventory capability?
Juniper supports Chef configuration management pretty extensively, and is widely used for systems management and patch management on Linux. Scales to multisite well. There are tie-ins to be able to export monitoring and alerting tool configurations based on server and network inventories, etc.
https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/junos-chef11.10/topics/concept/chef-overview.html
There are also Puppet, Ansible, and Saltstack in this product space, slightly less well supported with Juniper as I understand it (haven’t looked extensively, someone else may have better info).
I would have to agree with this too. Unless you are looking at a multifaceted approach where you can compare two different sources of knowledge then use the config mgmt tools to cover that baseline is pretty adequate until…
You have client computers and hardware along that level to track. So in that instance since everything has an IP these days then phpIPAM or similar can do quite the job storing serial numbers, makes, models, descriptions and tracking the on and offline status plus plenty more.
Expanding further, there are those that use ansible for network management. But I don’t think it does well in scaling out for functionality. I have used saltstack for network config and server builds, as it becomes the source of truth for the infrastructure, allowing for consistent upgrades and additions. Combining with something like netbox for infrastructure source of truth, one can build to spec, and then use something like rancid as an independent confirmation of ‘build to spec’.
I’ve been able to script builds to automatically boot a blank device via pxeboot, get an operating system and customized modules installed, restarted, automatically registered to receive the starting configuration, register against a check_mk/nagios based monitoring system, and for servers, to automatically create and build containers and their contents. It greatly simplifies the maintenance and upgrade tasks in to repeatable and reproducible build solutions. Plus the source of truth configuration files can be version controlled to provide a history infrastructure adjustments.
What I like about saltstack and netbox, is that they are both based upon python, which is a relatively common skillset and a growing ecosystem.
Quali CLoudshell does this and much more. Give me a call or email and we can hook you up. 407-257-3069
Cisco and juniper both use CLoudShell for these activities.
Agreed. Current environment is a saltstack/netbox combo that’s, shall we say, “in development”.