Installation and configuration

This guide walks you through installing and configuring Inventory Manager on Itential Platform.

Prerequisites

Before installing Inventory Manager, ensure you have the following:

• Itential Platform 6.3 or later
• Gateway Manager 1.0.5 or later
• IAG 5.3 or later
• MongoDB (configured with your Platform installation)
• Administrative access to your Platform instance
• Access to Itential's software repository

Step 1: Install Inventory Manager

Inventory Manager is distributed as an RPM package for Itential Platform installations.

To install Inventory Manager:

1. Download the Inventory Manager installer package from Nexus.
   1. If downloading to a different machine, copy the RPM package to your Platform server:

   scp /path/to/installer <your-user>@<server-hostname-or-ip>:/tmp
   

2. Install the package.

sudo dnf localinstall ./itential-inventory-manager-1.0.0.noarch.rpm

4. Restart your Itential Platform instance.

Database configuration

Inventory Manager stores data in MongoDB collections within your Platform database. The installation process automatically creates the required collections and indexes:

• inventories - Stores inventory definitions and metadata
• inventory_nodes - Stores node data for all inventories
• inventory_tags - Stores tags

Step 2: Create the Inventory Manager adapter

After installing Inventory Manager, you must create and instantiate the Inventory Manager adapter. The Inventory Manager adapter enables Device Broker integration, allowing Configuration Manager and command templates to access inventory devices.

To create the adapter:

1. Navigate to Admin Essentials.
2. Click the plus (+) icon in the top toolbar of the Admin Essentials application to open the Create dialog.
3. Select Adapter from the dropdown menu, enter the desired name of the adapter (we recommend inventory-manager-adapter) and select the InventoryManager as the type, and then click Save.
4. (Optional) Edit the adapter’s configuration file to control which inventories are exposed to Device Broker and how device names are formatted. By default, all inventories are exposed and device name prefixing is enabled. For more information, see Adapter configuration file.
5. Select Status from the left-side navigation menu and navigate to the Adapters tab.
6. Find your new Inventory Manager adapter in the list and click the play button to start the adapter connectivity.

Adapter configuration file

The adapter configuration file controls two key behaviors:

• Which inventories are exposed to Device Broker
• How device names are formatted

Inventory selection

The inventories property controls which inventories Device Broker can access.

Default configuration (all inventories):

{
  "inventories": "all"
}

This default setting exposes all inventories to Device Broker. Configuration Manager and command templates can access devices from any inventory.

Selective inventory exposure:

{
  "inventories": ["prod-routers", "prod-switches"]
}

Use this configuration when you want to limit Device Broker access to specific inventories. Only devices in the listed inventories will be available to Configuration Manager and command templates.

When to use selective inventory exposure:

• Restricting access to production inventories during testing
• Limiting Configuration Manager scope to specific device types
• Managing performance by reducing the number of devices Device Broker queries

Device naming prefix

The prepend_inventory_name property controls how device names appear in Device Broker.

Default configuration (with prefix):

{
  "prepend_inventory_name": true
}

With this default setting, device names include the inventory name as a prefix: inventory-name::node-name.

This prevents name collisions when multiple inventories contain nodes with the same name. It also makes it clear which inventory a device belongs to when working in Configuration Manager or command templates.

Without prefix:

{
  "prepend_inventory_name": false
}

With this setting, device names appear as just the node name without the inventory prefix.

Step 3: Create your first inventory

After installation and configuration, you're ready to create your first inventory. Create inventories using the Inventory Manager tasks in workflows or by calling the API directly.

For detailed instructions on creating and populating inventories, see Create and populate inventories.