Hardware Inventory Management

Your IT environment consists of a variety of assets, and the updated database listing these products is called a hardware and software inventory.

This inventory is a record of all the essential information related to the hardware and software within your IT environment. It’s meant to help you stay on top of all the products in your network, along with their license keys, expiration dates, IP addresses, serial numbers, types and places of installation, and more.

A hardware asset management inventory can help you determine the condition and lifespan of your hardware. It also helps you keep track of who has access to what hardware within your company.

When it comes to software, an inventory can help you stay on top of your update cycle, your expiration and license renewal dates, and the different types of software deployed or installed in your IT infrastructure.

Hardware asset management is the process of keeping track of relevant information related to the hardware elements within your IT environment. 

Through IT hardware inventory management, you can collect and define asset types, locations, statuses, maintenance logs, models, warranty information, serial numbers, and manufacturers, making it easier for you to track and monitor your hardware. 

This process requires discovering new assets and updating current ones. Good management requires you to store your data in an organized fashion, so you can find the information you need at a moment's notice. The hardware inventory management process also involves tracking dates when you may need to take action, such as expiration dates. Additionally, you can note changes to hardware and configurations within an associated change management database (CMDB).

Traditional hardware inventory management required manual updates to paper records or spreadsheets. Today, computer network inventory software simplifies this process, saving time and reducing the likelihood of human error.

Hardware inventory management can help you ensure your system and business are always equipped with the necessary underlying resources.

Hardware inventory management is designed to provide you with detailed information about all your hardware assets. By consolidating your assets from across your organization, you can easily visualize your full asset life cycle, which can help you identify areas where you can reduce the overall cost of assets.

Computer inventory software works by automatically scanning your entire network and creating detailed records of the hardware assets it discovers during the scan. This scan is designed to detect changes to the hardware in your network, documenting all your assets and their configurations in a central control center. 

The software then monitors this hardware inventory automatically. It centralizes the maintenance process so you’re better able to keep your devices up-to-date. The software can send you automated alerts if there are action items needing your attention, and you can use it to run reports about your system’s inventory or recent changes. 

When a request for a new computer enters the service desk, or it comes time to upgrade a model of devices, you’ll know exactly where your inventory stands and how each request impacts the organization.

SolarWinds Service Desk is built to help simplify the hardware inventory management process by automatically scanning your network and centralizing asset information. You can easily access information about what hardware you have in your network, where it’s physically located, who’s using it, and its configuration history. 

Following the initial scan, the tool can periodically scan and update asset data. This means you can see detailed configuration and physical location of each laptop, server, PC, or other hardware asset on your network. 

Service Desk serves as a CMDB and can allow you simplify the process of tracking changes in your IT hardware inventory to help ensure changes are accurate, effective, and see the impact of future changes. You can also track configuration items, easily map relationships between components, and link your assets to issues for a more seamless ticketing process.