The problem or tangible benefits are to provide an easier way of handling hosts, laying them out in pages by categories such as location, application etc. This becomes a real issue when the number of hosts is large.
The other benefit I see is that it makes hobbit look a lot more professional and enterprise ready if multiple users can change / add / remove hosts without having to rely on an admin with vi to modify the files. Even if the data is coming from other locations such as an asset database, it is usually easier to write a database to database interface. (I am now ducking in order to avoid the incoming flames).
We have 20 or more IT staff who add servers and it is all done through the database interface. Commits to hobbit from the database are made only when one of 3 people go into the database application and verify the changes. This is a trade off between many hands on the bbhosts file and the other side which require the hobbit admins to have to type everything.
I found that even when we had two or three people editing the bbhosts, that I couldn't trust that someone wouldn;t screw the file up.
We never ever touch the bbhosts file now.
We do of course have the benefit of a development hobbit system which allows for easy development of code etc.
I think maybe a seperate project outside of hobbit is the way to go here. Just create a db application and interface to hobbit and then people can choose to use it or not. I just know that I am being continually harassed by the helpdesk manager because in his view the helpdesk application can do all of this (which I know is not true). It is just easy for him at the moment to run down hobbit in front of the IT Director because he calls it a toy cmpared to apps with db frontends.
"W.J.M. Nelis" <nelis at nlr.nl> wrote on 10/06/2010 06:19:43 PM:
[image removed]
Re: [hobbit] CPAN Modules
W.J.M. Nelis
to:
hobbit at hswn.dk
10/06/2010 06:24 PM
Please respond to hobbit
Buchan Milne wrote:
On Wednesday, 9 June 2010 00:24:27 david.peters at industry.nsw.gov.au wrote:
BTW we still use a database to store all information about our servers and routers and then use this to generate the bbhosts and include files. This includes a screen under INFO for a host that provides this information within hobbit.
Well, in devmon, I have some work in my local checkout which populates some discover-related information into a database (e.g., cdp neighbours, IPs, routes).
Allows us to do advanced searching based on other parameters, using an advanced search web screen within hobbit.
Last time I spoke of the database there seemed to be very little interest in it so it has stayed where it is and hasn't been used anywhere else.
I think having a database is useful. I think there was resistance to having all the monitoring depend on a database.
I think that at quite a few sites a database is used to generate the xymon configuration files, thus using a database for monitoring purposes
is perhaps not an such a big issue. In my case, the use of an additional
database for monitoring only is not feasible. There is a database, used
by many applications, maintained by a lot of people, which I should use for the monitoring application as well. There must be some real benefits
in order to justify the (partial) duplication of information and the additional maintenance efforts.
Regards, Wim Nelis.
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