All IT shops that reach a certain number of servers have some of form of inventory. In web operations , but not limited to, there is some incarnation of the Truth concept - a comprehensive database that describes all the equipment, relation between them and other information. An idealized Truth database can be asked any question about anything that's in the colo/server room and it will have some information about it. We use Racktables for that and have a bunch of scripts to generate configuration files for different things (nagios, dhcp, etc.).
We are also exploring some alternatives like a ldap directory server or some text files based thing (to keep it in subversion and have a history of changes).
What do you guys use ?
I know about GLPI and similar products but those are mostly for office LANs. We run a averaged sized colo (almost 1000 units) with linux servers.
