At my last gig I was hoping that a CMDB would be able to act as a single pane of glass for managing the IT environment. We were using Sysaid which did a great many things (except for monitoring Linux servers which was 90% of our server environment so it wasn't as helpful as their sales guys indicated it would be). In fact, we were using it as a single pane of glass for all things IT. In hindsight, though, I think a CMDB, even one as powerful as Sysaid, wasn't quite enough.

This week I've introduced a dedicated asset management application to the environment. For no better reason than it was the first one that caught my eye, I've opted for Snipe-IT.  There's a couple of reasons why I decided to introduce asset management:

1. It allows me to know what my stock levels are at for consumables and accessories (like mice and keyboards). A CMDB all on it's own isn't really capable of that.  Sure, the CMDB I'm using has a plug in that'll handle it but it's pricey.
2. Since we're moving away from using Dell desktops, I've been building computers. Snipe-IT lets me track things as a component level - warranties and the like. The CMDB assumes retail computers rather than piece parts.
3. Where is stuff? Snipe-IT lets me get pretty granular in relation to who has a device as well as where it's located.

So now I have the following management tools in  place:

• Zabbix for infrastructure monitoring and alerting
• Snipe-IT for asset management and to aid in accounting/budget
• OCS-Inventory NG for tracking software on machines
• iTop for the CMDB and ticketing system
• Graylog for log management

It's a lot. I'm sure that somewhere there is a single application that'll manage all of this stuff but the important thing to remember is that we're a small company and IT is not our gig. All of the above tools are open source and self hosted. They work and with a little elbow grease, I'm finding that they will talk to each other.