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Inventory Device Name not as expected

Hi, We've been looking to match data exported from FNMS to import into our CMDB which takes feeds from a number of other systems.  While creating the reports we've found a few issues with matching by the inventory device name.  

The main issue is the fact that the value returned doesn't always match with what we expect - the majority of the time it does return the server name but in some cases it returns the nickname (we've mainly noticed this issue on Windows servers).  Please can someone confirm how the Inventory Device Name is retrieved and if it's possible to return all names that the server is know by internally & externally so we can reliably match it up to data from other sources?

The second issue I've found is that I was originally using "Installations - Inventory Device Name", while investigating the nickname issue I ran a simple report with Inventory Device name from both the Installations and Inventory Device tables.  When comparing the two lists there are approximately 6% of servers listed in Inventory Device which don't appear in the Installations version of the same list.  Does anyone know why this mismatch comes about and how we might be able to resolve the issue?  We need to be able to trust the data which comes out in reports so we need to know that the fields from alternative tables will return a full set of data and not require additional work to ensure completeness. 

 

Thanks

Andy

(2) Replies

@AndyTyson 

I'm not sure what you refer to by "nickname", please could you exemplify your issues seen on one of the Windows servers using "computer name/NetBIOS name", "hostname" and "DNS name" as that may clarify a bit and allow community members to provide some guidance?

Also, do you think the two issues seen are related, i.e. are the missing ~6% in your report related to the naming issue?

Thanks,

Hi @AndyTyson ,

 

As far as I know, agent is using WMI to get the host name from a server, I often found out that some server also have some alias in DNS, and in CMDB the customer use this alias, which is different from the one installed on server.

The matching between asset and inventory is done by default after serial number.

When you say nickname, I think is other way around, the servers don't have nickname as hostname, is only hostname, you can use nickname or aliases in dns, to have a friendly name to use, but putting this alias in CMDB is bad practice from my point of view.