Server Inventory software (ie for parts) ?

[james23]

Ive been looking (and failing to find), some type of inventory management software (or web app), that would allow us to keep track of server parts (and HDDs!). While this would be for my home office setup, i have a huge setup, so it would be worth it to enter all the parts/data in my case.

Ideally one that allows you to scan barcodes of parts or HDDs (even better w scan in via a phone/app, so you dont have to buy a laser-based UPC scanner ). And ideally allows one to add a picture or image to that entry.

Ive been looking, and most Inventory mgmt SW is either very expensive, or is highly geared towards running a store/sales. There are a few FOSS / community supported options (ie Odoo), but those also look very sales/orders centric (and not what we would be looking for).

any one have any info or suggestions? I know SW exists out there for DCs or Large enterprises (but im not sure of the names).

tks

 

[klammore]

grocy/grocy and Home - Snipe-IT Open Source IT Asset Management are popular.

I'm kinda looking for something similar as well.

 

[Aestr]

Snipe-IT looks interesting. It would be handy to have a system to keep track of where certain parts end up.

 

[svtkobra7]

Not related to your thread ... but curious why the strikethrough for SuperMicro as a "Favorite Mfgs" in your sig? (if you care to share)

 

[i386]

Chinese Spy Chips?

 

[svtkobra7]

Chinese Spy Chips?

Thought that was debunked?

 

[IamSpartacus]

Thought that was debunked?

Very much so

 

[james23]

Not related to your thread ... but curious why the strikethrough for SuperMicro as a "Favorite Mfgs" in your sig? (if you care to share)

lol, funny you noticed the strikethrough. and no, nothing to do with that BS Chinese spy story.

I love SM (and still do), but have had some pretty bad experiences with them and support over the past 3-6 months which has really turned me off to them. Prior to recently SM did not have a strikethrough it , in my sig.

1st issue was getting a small part (a bracket for holding a "internal" pcie card in place, that we lost), for a 1.5yr old server (bought new, and under warranty). it was 30+ emails (no joke), and many, many calls just to ID the part! then i had to buy an entire (large) assembly to get this one part (120$ for a 2$ part, nbd though). then they shipped it, but it didnt have the part needed (i had even asked the RMA lady to check that the part was there b4 shipping, as they stated no returns on parts) . (after this, they did fedex just the part alone to make up for the miss shipment). really rediclous. also had to keep filling out these long pia forums.

issues 2 and 3, involved RMAs on different MBs, and it was just a unnecessary fiasco. Had 4yr advanced replacement cross-ship warranty- but SM kept saying one of them was from an OEM supplier (that OEM was bought out by HPE a yr ago, so was non-existent from a contact perspective), only to eventually determine it was not really from an OEM and they would cover it.

All really unfortunate, as i love their stuff, and have built or managed 100s of their servers over the years. but these issues were uncalled for and sloppy, honestly. thus the change from no-strikethrough to strikethrough

 

[svtkobra7]

lol, funny you noticed the strikethrough. and no, nothing to do with that BS Chinese spy story.

• I noticed the signature some time ago, as it is a refreshing departure from the norm.
  • To me, the first line calls to mind a different type of rack than you intend ... （。 ㅅ 。）...
    
  • Then I see poor SMCI's name "blacklisted" and can't help to wonder why you dislike them so.
    
  • And finally regarding the P3700, internal queries are generated as to whether you have heard of this Optane thing.

I love SM (and still do), but have had some pretty bad experiences with them and support over the past 3-6 months which has really turned me off to them. Prior to recently SM did not have a strikethrough it , in my sig.

• Man, you are brutal! You could have just removed them entirely, but no, you had to twist that knife further with a strikethrough. Ouch.
  • If it makes you feel any better they haven't been having the best time as a company recently (as I know you know).

1st issue was getting a small part (a bracket for holding a "internal" pcie card in place, that we lost), for a 1.5yr old server (bought new, and under warranty). it was 30+ emails (no joke), and many, many calls just to ID the part!

• Its funny (but not) that you call out their secret MPN list.
  • I've experienced the same frustration there too ...
    
  • Much of the time Google is of no help with resellers all using the wrong stock photo, but as an option of last resort, I've found the FAQ section on their website to yield positive results.
• When I've needed to turn to contacting support, I've found them to be superbly helpful, especially to someone who has only purchased their wares on the secondary market.

then i had to buy an entire (large) assembly to get this one part (120$ for a 2$ part, nbd though). then they shipped it, but it didnt have the part needed (i had even asked the RMA lady to check that the part was there b4 shipping, as they stated no returns on parts) . (after this, they did fedex just the part alone to make up for the miss shipment). really rediclous. also had to keep filling out these long pia forums.

• My experience on the RMA side has been completely positive:
  • "Eco rework" (that term still makes me chuckle) on the X9DRi-LN4F to update to E5 2600 v2 (which they probably didn't have to do per the terms of their warranty agreement).
  • One of the small plastic retention pins on a chassis bezel broke practically the second time I removed the bezel (which I purchased off ebay ... new ... but likely not from an authorized reseller) and they RMAed it and sent me a brand new one, which they definitely didn't have to do.

All really unfortunate, as i love their stuff, and have built or managed 100s of their servers over the years. but these issues were uncalled for and sloppy, honestly. thus the change from no-strikethrough to strikethrough

• Whoa - thats a good many servers. Freaking impressive! I've shamefully only done 3, which I suppose is defensible as I didn't make the switch from COTS NAS appliances to enterprise servers until '17.
• With the scope of your experience being much broader than my own, I want to discount my position a bit, but I wouldn't say I love the engineering / documentation (or lack thereof) of their products (although I don't hate them either), but I do love the value proposition they offer.

I have an excruciatingly bad sense of humor and I'm 100% kidding with my bad jokes. I'm sorry to hear of your negative experience for sure, but hope you fare better in the future. Thanks for sharing, as literally every time I read one of your posts, the question nagged at me as to the meaning.

Have a good one.

 

[james23]

wow that is so funny you menton the X9DRi-LN4F to update to E5 2600 v2 , in your reply.

I was randomly reconsidering today how i felt about SM recently. and i remembered that this too (below) is part of why i have the strikethough!
(keep in mind the strike-though was only added about 2 months ago, so its the sum of all these things , over past year or 2, that made me do it.

about 2 years ago, i was a bit disabppointed to learn that my X9dr3-ln4f MBs couldnt be upgraded to v2 cpus. The mb specs page say they can be (ALL you need is a recent BIOS version, RIGHT?).

You know where this is going of course, but it's not just the BIOS you have to have a REV 1.20 hardware-wise motherboard. And it seemed for a while supermicro was doing the more than fair thing of taking in out-of-warranty boards and doing the reworking required for v2 cpus (I'm sure you read that excellent long thread on sth). So I followed the steps and filled out the RMA form, and supermicro rejected my request. There's a decent chance it's because I was a little late to the party and many others around the same time from STH were doing the same. So that's really not too big of a deal, what does kind of piss me off is that their spec page is misleading in the first place, and continues to be. (they imply that all you need is a bios update when we know it's much more than that). Now anytime I see V3 or V4 CPU supported on XYZ motherboard supermicro motherboard, I wonder if that's the case truly or do you need to find one of many REVs per MB.

One other issue I didn't mention, and this was about four months ago, for some reason 2x Intel P 3700 nvme Drives ( U.2 / 2.5 inch formfactor ) , would not show up when I would boot my 1.5 year old x10 DP based system (full SM system, not parts put together). It comes with a SAS3 + 4 nvme backplane. The P3700 drives would only show up on a warm boot, or if I boot it up and then reboot it. BUT On a cool boot they would not show up at all. Since it was an entire SM system (i added the p3700 s through) and the P3700 is listed under the SM supported drives, I contacted supermicro, the tech confirmed he was seeing the exact same issue as I, but then said they weren't going to be doing anything about it since the p3700 was now end of life by Intel at this point (so how was it ever on the SM approved list though?).

it took a while, but im starting to see why so many pay the big $ for dell and hpe stuff now..

fwiw, i did buy smci as soon as i finished reading that BB article right when the article broke, and i will continue to hodl it for the foreseeable future. But i havent been so happy with SM products and support as of late

 

[svtkobra7]

wow that is so funny you menton the X9DRi-LN4F to update to E5 2600 v2 , in your reply.

I was randomly reconsidering today how i felt about SM recently. and i remembered that this too (below) is part of why i have the strikethough!
(keep in mind the strike-though was only added about 2 months ago, so its the sum of all these things , over past year or 2, that made me do it.

• "Hi, my name is James and I'm a hater"

bout 2 years ago, i was a bit disabppointed to learn that my X9dr3-ln4f MBs couldnt be upgraded to v2 cpus. The mb specs page say they can be (ALL you need is a recent BIOS version, RIGHT?).

• Wait - what ... there is more to the story?
• I have 2680 v2 's inbound and a rev 1.01 board = no workie? (found out the hard way and I was epicly pissed)

You know where this is going of course, but it's not just the BIOS you have to have a REV 1.20 hardware-wise motherboard. And it seemed for a while supermicro was doing the more than fair thing of taking in out-of-warranty boards and doing the reworking required for v2 cpus (I'm sure you read that excellent long thread on sth).

• I may have contributed to the sth effect there.
• I do wonder, for every person that posted about an RMA, how many "shadow RMAers" lurk these here forums. It has to be 20:1 ... the pillaging was great while it lasted ...

So I followed the steps and filled out the RMA form, and supermicro rejected my request. There's a decent chance it's because I was a little late to the party and many others around the same time from STH were doing the same. So that's really not too big of a deal, what does kind of piss me off is that their spec page is misleading in the first place, and continues to be. (they imply that all you need is a bios update when we know it's much more than that). Now anytime I see V3 or V4 CPU supported on XYZ motherboard supermicro motherboard, I wonder if that's the case truly or do you need to find one of many REVs per MB.

• I have to restrain myself from continuing the debate (on your side) as you words echo a debate I've had over and over in my head.
  
• Why did they reject? OOW request?
• OK - gosh I can't help it - maybe a really weak addition ... omigosh I mean they even took the time to create a footnote for compatibility, why could it just be correct and note "+ rev 1.20 board"!?!
• (i feel better now - thx)

1. Dual socket R (LGA 2011) supports Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 and E5-2600 v2 family†

† BIOS version 3.0 or above is required

One other issue I didn't mention, and this was about four months ago, for some reason 2x Intel P 3700 nvme Drives ( U.2 / 2.5 inch formfactor ) , would not show up when I would boot my 1.5 year old x10 based system (full SM system, not parts put together). It comes with a SAS3 + 4 nvme backplane. The P3700 drives would only show up on a warm boot, or if I boot it up and then reboot it. BUT On a cool boot they would not show up at all. Since it was an entire SM system (i added the p3700 s through) and the P3700 is listed under the SM supported drives, I contacted supermicro, the tech confirmed he was seeing the exact same issue as I, but then said they weren't going to be doing anything about it since the p3700 was now end of life by Intel at this point (so how was it ever on the SM approved list though?).

• Did you ever get it resolved?

fwiw, i did buy smci as soon as i finished reading that BB article right when the article broke, and i will continue to hodl it for the foreseeable future. But i havent been so happy with SM products and support as of late

• So cash in your 100%+ annualized return and buy some P4800s ... maybe ???

 

[zxv]

Ive been looking (and failing to find), some type of inventory management software (or web app), that would allow us to keep track of server parts (and HDDs!).

There's also a list of self-hosted web apps for enterprise resource planning here:

Kickball/awesome-selfhosted

I've tried Odoo, and it was relatively painless to get it going in docker.
Haven't tried any of the rest.

 

[james23]

>Did you ever get it resolved?

No, i just do a reboot of esxi once it comes up, the rare times a do need to power cycle.
(btw, just a normal reboot, once the drive is already showing up, does not cause this, only from a power off/ cold boot). Also one little "trick" i found, is if cold booting, you can press F11 to bring up the BIOS override boot device menu, then press CTRL-ALT-DEL, and that counts as a reboot.
(and btw it does not occur with other u.2 NVMe's i have, NOR a p3700 pcie i tried in a pcie slot).

My only outstanding/current SM issue is trying to get warranty fix/rma on that X10dru-i+ MB i mentioned further up the thread. As we paid for the 4yr extended + cross-ship warranty, but SM is saying we need to go through the OEM (SGI which was bought by HPE. HPE cant find any info on the SN). This isnt really a SM problem per say, as it should be the OEM who covers this. But what is a bit annoying is that our board is a Rev 1.02a , and the exact issue we are having (wont power up unless you keep pressing power button while plug/unplug 1 of 2 psus a few times) :/ , this PDB "shorting" issue seems to have been fixed/addressed in SM's rev 1.02B version of this board.
(i know this info, as we are considering buying a replacement MB from ebay, as you cant get this board alone, new- so i called SM support and asked the phone rep if he could tell me what was changed between rev 1.01, 1.02A , 1.02B and the current, rev 1.10 , of this board - he was very helpful and read me the HW/rev change-logs). currently I am asking SM RMA dept to ask for an exception or if anything special can be done on this MB issue (even with us paying something reasonable, if needed). ill update here.

I will say SM phone support (and ticket support), is pretty good in that they answer quickly (phone too), and phone support will try to help regardless of if the product is in warranty or not (for the most part).

 

[svtkobra7]

Man that is bizarre regarding it not being recognized and $hitty of SMCI to wash their hands in such a manner.

Interesting you got the info out of them regarding the HW revision ... I had to take before and after pics and figure it out myself ... If you want a laugh, here is their response when I asked via email:

1. [me - in a rare non-verbose mood apparently] Stated differently, what exactly is the ECO rework that was performed on my board?
2. [P. - SMCI] We cannot provide this information to the customer.

But man they did me a solid (and many others too) with the RMA [1] as when I was flipped through emails (to grab the above nugget) I found the timeline I sent to another STH member as an FYI - RMA processed day after receipt, departed, 3 days after receipt of board from me. Further, as I couldn't wait to install my v2 CPUs, I promptly bought another board before sending to SMCI (from the east coast), so I sold the RMA upon return and it came with a nice RMA Product Repair Report which I suppose enhanced its marketability on fleabay - confirmed v2 compatibility + sign off that all components checked and functioning.
[1] and o/c you could rebut that they were just doing the right think due to purported compatibility.

My only beef at the moment is I can't determine whether the heck or not my 2 x X9DRH-7TF actually support bifurcation. It seems like one thread says X9 boards with latest BIOS don't, other threads say they do, but only on days of the week that end with "day," etc.

My bad jokes aside, I always appreciate hear another individuals experiences with a company whom I favor (and have a few products from) - so thanks for that.

[and please stop HODLing your SMCI stock - I have a finance background and as I tell everyone - if you had a core competency / comparative advantage in picking individual equity positions (I most certainly do not either) you would be managing a fund of funds in Manhattan - investing in individual equities is a fantastic way to increase risk and decrease return. I'd say the most granular you should go is ETF sector plays, but then again I don't exactly follow my own advice either. The problem with catching the falling knife this time is that it may build false confidence on the next attempt and that one servers your damn arm off on the way to the bottom. ]

 

[james23]

thanks for the info/reply. I do mainly have ETFs (about 70/30 , 30%= individual equities and trying for diverse sectors). and i agree, for ppl like us, picking individual equities; up/down is almost random / gambling (and heavily correlated with how the general market is trending). But on this one i felt it was something i was knowledgeable about + i saw a over reaction. (im not new to stocks, and also have enough experience to agree with you on the etf point). it certainly could have gone the other way. im young, and for me it really is more akin to gambling/hobby, as these stocks/etfs i hodl / am referring to arent my retirement savings (nor important to that).

anyway...
i have found that calling SM support can get you more info on the REV versions than emailing them. Atleaste the 3 or 4 times ive called about MB REV differences, i have always gotten real info via phone. (i have emailed on 2 or 3 occasions and always got really general (or unrelated) answers).

 

[svtkobra7]

thanks for the info/reply. I do mainly have ETFs (about 70/30 , 30%= individual equities and trying for diverse sectors).

• Shamefully, and I did note that I don't follow my own advice, I'm overweight in a single freaking position and have been for years (at least in regards to funds that aren't actively traded) @ 90%+ of my portfolio.
• Unfortunately (or better stated fortunately) with good cause though.

and i agree, for ppl like us, picking individual equities; up/down is almost random / gambling (and heavily correlated with how the general market is trending). But on this one i felt it was something i was knowledgeable about + i saw a over reaction. (im not new to stocks, and also have enough experience to agree with you on the etf point). it certainly could have gone the other way.

• I always ask my fiance, at what point do you get lucky enough, that it is statistically impossible for it to be luck? I posit it is defined as skill at some point. Maybe you are the next Buffet
• I might have a different view on the randomness, but not an appropriate forum here.
• I'm glad you made some nice coin. I LMAO everytime I see HODL (and immediately think of the videos)

im young, and for me it really is more akin to gambling/hobby, as these stocks/etfs i hodl / am referring to arent my retirement savings (nor important to that).

• Ladies and Gent's I introduce, Mr. Bobby Axelrod =>
• "What's the point of having F you money if you never say F you?” (Billions is one of my absolute favorite shows)
  
• Re: speculation, I figured you might counter with that => and I'm glad to hear you note that FWIW.
• There are ways to feed that itch and lock in your gains, hedge losses, but I'm sure you are aware.

anyway...
i have found that calling SM support can get you more info on the REV versions than emailing them. Atleaste the 3 or 4 times ive called about MB REV differences, i have always gotten real info via phone. (i have emailed on 2 or 3 occasions and always got really general (or unrelated) answers).

• I will keep that in mind (thx), but that knowledge is probably much more relevant for you ... I've only had 2 different SMCI boards to date.
• Its curious, our interactions with SMCI seem to be quite asymmetrical on a number of fronts. Odd.

Have a good one - nice chatting.

 

[james23]

getting a bit back on track, thanks for the Inventory suggestions, i have looked at the 2x suggested here, and non seem to have what im (mainly) looking for:
ie- "something" that can scan in barcodes via a phone's camera. (barcodes that come on the item, not user generated qr codes you apply as asset tags).

Snipe it seemed to be closest, but it requires a barcode scanner gun (and really that is a secondary item) , no phone camera support.
(same goes for Grocry, but Snipe it looks more appropriate than it)

I was hoping for something that can make use of a phone's camera (ie there are many barcode scanner type apps).

Anyone know of any solutions that offer that phone barcode scanning?
thanks

 

[Evan]

@james23 did you consider hiring a dev to make your own solution maybe using micro services on AWS/Azure/... etc ?
I figure it can’t be that hard, we use excel today but agree about barcodes being really useful !

 

[Patrick]

I use a phone app to scan IPMI barcodes and save to Google sheets. That is not what you are really looking for, but I agree, it would be useful.