Comprehensive data center management with new purchase module and more in v5.5.0

The Purchase module has been completely re-written based on feedback from our customers. We believe this version covers all the scenarios requested by our customers. We will cover more details in other post shortly, but in summary:

• The new interface enables you to enter Purchases and Line Items for each purchase.
• Line items can be one of two types: The first type is a Contract. This type of line item is for tracking service and warranty contracts. The second type is for everything else and includes devices, assets, tax, etc…
• In addition to the Line Type, each line has an Item Type that can be Device, Asset, Rack. Operating System, Shipping, Tax or Other. You can assign multiple objects for the chosen item type. For example, if the item type is device, you can add multiple devices to that line item.
• You can also enter a unit cost per line item and a quantity and the total of all one time (non-contract) purchases will be on the top of the page.
• The API calls to retrieve and create/update purchases have also been re-written to account for above changes.

Your existing purchase/contract/PO line data will be automatically migrated to the new module during the update. Please take a backup of your data before you update, as is always recommended.

The Dashboard gets a new look with draggable widgets. You can choose what to show on desktop now and we are open to suggestions regarding what you would like to see implemented. So please get your creative juices flowing and share your ideas with a feature request at: https://device42.zendesk.com/forums/20443933.

Password management has exciting new additions as summarized in the list below. A separate post will follow shortly discussing these in more details.

• The Password Menu has been moved to the top navigation bar for easier access.
• You can now copy passwords without showing the password.
• You can now generate random passwords while adding/editing a password.
• You can now create reports for passwords and can use the reporting facility to get notifications regarding what passwords have not been changed in the last n months.
• You can also retrieve your passwords via REST APIs.

Ping sweep has been added into the device42 UI. No more external dependencies. You can also assign a type to IP ranges and keep your IP documentation up-to-date. This feature will be covered in more detail in an upcoming post.

Many of you have asked for it and it is finally here. You can now assign physical and blade devices to a storage room. As soon as the device is assigned to a rack or blade chassis(for blade servers), it is automatically taken out of the storage room. Now you can track your spares and new devices much more easily.

Custom key pair values can now be of type text, numeric or date. This gives you more flexibility when storing user defined fields and values for objects. Also in the device and asset reports, you will be see options to filter by custom date keys, options to filter numeric custom key by less than or greater than the numeric value, and you will see contains filters for text custom keys.

When running SNMP server auto-discovery on Dell servers with open manage MIB files installed, the BMC IP and MAC address (or iDRAC) are now discovered. The IP is added to the device with label of “mgmt”. This enables you to discover and grab you iDRAC IP info right from device42 interface!

Certain models of Supermicro switches are now supported in the network SNMP auto-discovery.

Hardware bulk edit has been improved to show all hardware models that don’t have a type or size associated with them. Use this in conjunction with auto-discovery tools so you can more easily mount your devices to racks.

• The device name length limit increases to 64 characters.
• The device retrieval API now has HDD info as well.
• The rack retrieval API has size for each device, asset and PDU as well.
• The rack add API now accepts room and building name as parameters. Previously, you had to get the room ID.
• SNMPWALK for troubleshooting has a new optional field for entering OIDs.

• Room/Rack impact chart issue fixed.
• Impact charts will not error out anymore for any international language set as non-ascii characters are being stripped out on display now.
• Device bulk type change has better validation check and it only converts the devices that can be converted to chosen type.
• Find next slot issue fixed if rack numbering started from top
• In certain cases while discovering IPMI enabled devices, the task was staying as running while the background job had failed. We have added better exception handling for energy monitoring module.

If you are still looking for better ways to manage your data center inventory, the search is over! Grab a free trial of the device42 software and test it for yourself. Current users can grab the update file from: /update/