QA (public)

Motivation¶

From email "Re: Help Needed: Active Inventory of Maxtorhof SRV1/SRV2/SRV2X"

On 5/12/23 04:08, Oliver Kurz wrote:

Vojtech, Dietrich, and I had a call with IT this afternoon (morning US) to discuss what the future of systems located in the Maxtorhof server rooms looks like. One thing that is uncertain is what systems need to be kept, which will be decommissioned, and hw that has been purchased and is being stored in Maxtorhof. In sum, how much space we'll need in a new data center. There is a lot of hardware in those server rooms that is no longer actively used but hasn't been removed. I know some systems have been forgotten/abandoned (e.g. the old HA hex bladecenter is still racked). It doesn't make sense to move systems that should be scrapped and it would be super helpful to get these systems off the board.

Can I ask you to tag systems in Netbox[1] with one of the following tags for systems that are still actively used?

• BCL-LSG-Needed
• BCL-LSG-Needed-CC (for systems subject to common criteria)
• BCL-MGR-Needed
• BCL-SAP-Needed
• BCL-CSM-Needed

you want us to tag all systems, that is servers, switches, power rails, etc. in all SRV1/SRV2/SRV2X? If yes, what is the efficient way to do that better than walking over every single entry by hand?

Servers and switches, yes.  I don't think PDUs need to be documented explicitly: That'll be a function of how many systems are in each destination rack.

There is an API that can be used to query and update systems.  What parameters would you use to determine systems that need to be tagged?  I have some code that could be leveraged to help automate that

For bonus points, we have a To-be-decommissioned tag to mark a system affirmatively as to be scrapped. Otherwise, as we wind through the planning stages, we'll assume systems that aren't claimed aren't being used.  If we need additional tags, please let me know.
[1] https://netbox.dyn.cloud.suse.de

Can you please clarify the situation regarding
https://racktables.nue.suse.com/ vs. https://netbox.dyn.cloud.suse.de ?
To my knowledge https://racktables.nue.suse.com/ is still the reference and we are actively working with that system. It was never announced that nextbox should be used over racktables. If a full sync between both systems is ensured then of course we can add data to netbox but I would like to do that only after full confirmation.

Netbox is being periodically synced from Racktables.  Hannes is putting together the HLD for replacing Racktables with Netbox.  For now, continue tracking systems as you had in Racktables, but we're using Netbox for exercises like this because it has an API instead of requiring direct database access to do bulk operations.

-Jeff

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Jeff Mahoney
VP Engineering, LSG Systems