Viewing Inventory
The Inventory pages show inventory data in different views to help you best find answers about your hardware inventory. The views include Tree, Table, Availability, and Summary.
Accessing Inventory Data
Step 1 Navigate to WAE Live > Inventory and select the network (top left) on which you want to create the report.
If there is only one network configured, the word “default” appears in the top left side on the Analytics page.
Step 2 On the Inventory page, click the Inventory view you want to see, for example, Tree. You can also choose Table, Availability, and Summary views.
Viewing the Inventory Tree
The Inventory Tree page provides a hierarchical representation of the current hardware in your network. It also provides information on how the hardware is interconnected within the chassis. This filterable table enables you to search for these interconnections. For example, you can find a specific chassis by filtering on its name or you can navigate to connected interfaces.
Finding Available Modules or Ports
One key use case is for determining if there are any empty slots available to accommodate future growth. For example, if you need to add five10-GB interfaces on a specific router (node), you can determine how many, if any, empty module and port slots you have. This can further help you plan for future hardware expenses.
To determine if there are available modules or ports, enter “empty” as the column’s filter. If there are no results, then there are none available. Returned results indicate exactly which slots are available.
Finding Hardware Details
To find detailed information about any piece of hardware, hover over the top of it. Note that the Parent ID is the SNMP ID of a physical child asset. For example, a slot’s Parent ID is the SNMP ID of the chassis to which it belongs.
To see the Explore data for an interface or a node associated with a port, or to see more details on the node itself, use the Related Info icon (arrow on the far right).
Adding Notes
When the Port and the Interface Admin Status columns are populated, you can add notes by clicking the [Add] link in the Notes column. This can be useful for communicating with peers. For example, you might add a note that a port is reserved for a specific project or that it is faulty.
All users can see the notes, read the history of the notes (that is, each edit made to the note), and edit the notes. To edit or read the history, click the note itself to open a dialog box with Edit and Show History links.
Notes cannot be deleted.
Viewing the Inventory Table
The Inventory Table page lists all physical elements in the network. While you can filter on any column to find network elements, the predominate use case is to find serial numbers by using the filtering capabilities in the Serial Number field.
Viewing Inventory Availability
The Inventory Availability page enables you to determine how many slots are available (free to use) per node (router), per linecard, and per module. One use case would be to identify how to consolidate empty slots and empty ports.
Note Each hardware element that can host is considered to be a “slot.” If a chassis or linecard does not have available slots, of if a module does not have available ports, it is not listed in their respective tables.
If a linecard is modular, it represents the number of slots it can hold, not ports.
The Modules table shows the number of ports, available ports and ports that are down. A port is considered down if its Operational Status is down.
Viewing Hardware Inventory Summary
The Inventory Summary page gives the count of hardware elements in the network on a per element basis. One use case would be if a vendor announced that a linecard were being deprecated, you could use this table to determine how many linecards you would need to replace. You could further understand the impact by filtering to the model in the Availability page to determine how many slots are available, thus indicating where you would need to move traffic.
Combined with information on the cost of the hardware, this Summary table could help you estimate the total cost of the network.
Columns
- Available Slots —Number of slots that are not being used.
- Chassis —A descriptive or exact name of the router type, such as ASR9000.
- Count —Number of network elements of given type.
- Interface Admin Status —Administrative status of the interface connected to the port. Values are Up for active or Down for inactive.
- Interface Description —Optional description of the interface connected to the port.
- Linecard —A printed circuit board that contains ports or modules (which in turn, contain ports). A linecard plugs into a chassis slot.
- Model —A particular unit of hardware that identifies its style or type.
- Module —A self-contained hardware element that contains ports and plugs into a chassis or a linecard slot. An example module name is 10-port 100-Gbps LSR. A module is also sometimes called a PIC.
- Module Slot —A slot in a linecard for holding modules.
- Name —The name of the hardware identified in the Type column. If applicable, such as for chassis and linecards, this is the model.
- Node —Router name, such as 168.243.0/24:BgpPsn.
- Number Slots —Total number of slots an element contains (both used and unused).
- Parent SNMP ID —Hardware has a parent-child relationship based on where the object resides within the router. The chassis has no parent and is considered the root object. Other than the chassis, each object has one parent and can have one or more child objects. The Parent SNMP ID is the identifier of the parent.
- Port —A socket that accepts a plug. For example, cables are plugged into Ethernet ports. An example port name is GigabitEhternet0/1/0/7.
- Port Slot —A slot in a module for holding physical interface ports.
- Serial Number —A unique series of numbers and letters assigned by the vendor to each hardware element. An example serial number is X8XP16J2.
- Slot —Each hardware element that can host is considered to contain slots. Chassis have slots that contain linecards. Linecards have slots that contain ports or modules. Modules have slots that contain ports.
- SNMP ID —ID of the hardware element as described by the router.
- Transceiver —An electronic device or circuit that transmits and receives analog or digital signals. Transceivers are connected to ports. An example name is DWDM Xenpaks.
- Type —The hardware element category. For example, chassis and module are both types of hardware.
- Vendor —The company that sells the node (router).