Managing detailed hardware inventory
TrueSight Network Automation discovers details of hardware, including memory, for the Cisco IOS Switch/Router, Cisco Nexus, and Cisco XR Router devices. TrueSight Network Automation stores change history for these hardware elements. In the future, hardware discovery can be extended to other device types.
The following sections in this topic describe how to manage detailed hardware inventory.
Discovering Cisco detailed hardware inventory
On each snapshot, TrueSight Network Automation discovers hardware such as chassis, mainboard, interfaces, and their associated attributes.
The attributes can include name, description, product identifier (PID), version identifier (VID) and serial number (SN).
The PID is used when ordering parts from Cisco, processing end-of-service notifications and tracking component changes (adds, deletes, moves). The chassis hardware entity serial number most often tracks to your SMARTnet service agreement (that is, backplane serial number). For stackable switches, multiple chassis serial numbers are discovered and reported.
In addition, TrueSight Network Automation discovers the total, used and free memory, including flash, NVRAM, and RAM used by the processor and I/O.
You can use the Device Filter to search the discovered hardware inventory by any hardware attribute. You can generate Device Inventory reports and Hardware Inventory Change Details reports to track hardware inventory and any historical changes, respectively.
The following figure shows a Device Inventory report based on discovered hardware attributes.
Reconciling Cisco SMARTnet maintenance contract renewals
Review the following topics to enable you to use the TrueSight Network Automation system's Cisco hardware inventory discovery to help reconcile Cisco SMARTnet contracts when budgeting and renewing contracts.
Initial device database setup
For Cisco IOS Switch/Router, Cisco Nexus, and Cisco XR Router devices, TrueSight Network Automation discovers and stores device models, PID and serial numbers. Most likely your site maintains other asset management data in an Excel spreadsheet or asset management system. You can use TrueSight Network Automation to consolidate this data to one location to efficiently reconcile SMARTnet contract renewals.
Importing asset management data
Add Device dynamic fields (under Admin > Dynamic Fields ) for the asset data you plan to import (for example, Contract Number, Serial Number, Begin Date, End Date, PO Number and Service Type). For older Cisco models, the discovered serial number might not match the backplane serial number used by SMARTnet. Therefore, you can include a Serial Number dynamic field for these cases to manually set or import the serial number. You can also use the Custom Action Get System Serial Number to capture the serial number from the device.
You can import asset data by using the following:
- CSV seed file (for example, Excel worksheet, Cisco Service Contract Center (SCC) downloaded file)
- Custom JDBC device import adapter — Used to import data directly from an asset management system's database by using SQL.
The Device Import supports a Scope option to import data only for existing devices. When overlaying asset data, BMC recommends using this option to eliminate adding extraneous devices to the database.
If you do not maintain asset data today, you might want to consider loading data from the Cisco SCC website. However, only import Cisco SCC data if both systems use the same device Name/IP Address, as shown below.
From the Cisco SCC site, you can download the SMARTnet service agreements to a CSV file. Remove unneeded columns (for example, Bill To Name) in the SMARTnet CSV file and rename Name/IP Address to name (this is case sensitive). Create the appropriate dynamic fields in the system that match the SMARTnet report column headers: Contract Number, Contract Begin Date, Contract End Date, Serial Number, Contract PO Number and Service Level.
Now, you are ready to use Admin > Device Import to import current service agreement information.
The following figure show an example of a Device Inventory Record.
After the initial database setup, BMC recommends the following simple guidelines to maintain accurate production data for contract reconciliation:
- Add a New Device: When adding the new device, minimally assign the SMARTnet Serial Number (for older models) and Contract End Date. You can use the Custom Action, Get System Serial Number.
- Replace Failed (RMA): The replacement is covered under the existing agreement, so update the Serial Number (for older models) in the device record. You can use the Custom Action, Get System Serial Number.
- Swap Existing Device with a Different Model: If re-using the device Hostname/IP Address, minimally update the Serial Number (for older models) and the Contract End Date based on its SMARTnet contract. You can use the Custom Action, Get System Serial Number.
- Decommission a Device: If you want to keep the device in the inventory for change history, set the device to Offline. When you generate the Device Inventory report for renewals, Offline devices are not listed.
Generating Device Inventory report to validate SMARTnet renewals
When ready to budget or renew Cisco SMARTNet agreements, generate a Device Inventory report for your production network, as shown below. The Device Inventory report can be exported and emailed in CSV, PDF, HTML, and RTF formats.
Planning OS image and hardware upgrades
The Device Inventory report can also be used when planning OS image upgrades and hardware expansions or upgrades. For hardware upgrades, you can determine used slots from the discovered hardware entities. For software upgrades, you can report on discovered model; OS version; total, used, and free processor and I/O memory sizes; and total, used, and free flash sizes.
Using the Device list Filter, you can also search the devices by any attribute including serial numbers (and ranges), product identifiers, and memory and flash sizes (and ranges).
Viewing hardware change history
TrueSight Network Automation tracks hardware change history providing these operational benefits:
- Track field replacements (RMAs) for service level verification
- Verify deployment of approved hardware upgrades
- Detect and report unauthorized hardware changes
TrueSight Network Automation captures the current hardware inventory each time it takes a configuration snapshot. TrueSight Network Automation compares the new hardware inventory to the current hardware inventory. TrueSight Network Automation detects changes to the device's hardware entities (name, description, product identifier, version identifier, serial number), memory and file system flash. When there is a change, TrueSight Network Automation updates the device's current inventory and archives the previous hardware inventory. The administrator defines how many hardware changes are stored and for how long.
You can view the hardware history from the Device Status tab, Device View 
, and the Device Inventory report.
The Hardware Inventory Change Details report shows exactly which hardware changed and when. This report is launched from the Device Inventory report when you click History for Hardware Inventories 
(shown in the following figure).
The report displays all hardware entities, memories and file systems side by side with the additions, deletions and changes highlighted. Differences in used and free sizes are shown, but are ignored for change reporting.
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