Very soon the new major version of GLPI will be released with many new features, including a major overhaul of the interface.
Here is the quick look at automatic inventory features.
GLPI Desktop / Server Agent
Fork of the Perl FusionInventory agent, this new agent is enhanced with several new features:
- A new stand-alone interface (called Toolbox) allowing the configuration of network discoveries and inventories.
- An improved proxy mode to allow inventory reporting from remote networks.
- Remote inventory support (agentless), currently with support for WinRM (Windows) and SSH (Linux / Unix) protocols.
- Inventory of database servers.
- New exchange protocol with GLPI server in JSON format supporting partial inventory.
- Soon: management of remote inventory tasks, including for ESX polls.
- Improved Windows support including MSI packages.
- Native support for MacOSX Big Sur and the new Apple Silicon M1 chip.
The GLPI agent can advantageously replace the FusionInventory agent because it remains fully compatible with the automatic inventory of the FusionInventory.
This new agent is already available, you can download and test it:
https://github.com/glpi-project/glpi-agent/releases
Nightly built packages are also available to get the latest developments: https://nightly.glpi-project.org/glpi-agent/
We provide the community with a documentation detailing the installation, use and configuration of this new agent. Note that there may still be a few aspects to be completed (the missing points will be filled in the coming weeks).
We also provide a perl script (see dedicated documentation) allowing you to install agent on Linux with a suitable package (rpm, deb, snap.)
Some screenshots to illustrate the ToolBox interface of new agent:
GLPI Android Agnet
Some time ago the android agent has returned to the google play store. It supports versions 4 to 10.
For GLPI Network subscription customers, we have also added the possibility of configuring the server URL via mechanism called “Deeplink”. Using QRCode agent automatically retrieves the configuration to connect to the server.
GLPI Native Inventory
We are happy to announce we add support for automatic inventory directly to GLPI core.
New API REST (front/inventory.php) will be available to receive inventory files in historical format (OCS, fusioninventory) or via new format json.
We therefore keep compatibility with the previous agents (just it will be necessary to reconfigure the server URLs of the historical agents, or to set up a web proxy to perform a redirection to the new URL).
You can now manage with this new format most of GLPI’s inventory objects, like telephones, applications, racks, etc.
This is enabled by a new rewrite of the underlying code. The interface is inspired by the community projects mentioned above, the code is new.
This code now allows you to receive partial inventories.
This consists of sending only part of the particular information related to the object, and indicating to the server – via a flag – to update only the data concerned.
Transfer, processing, insertion and update of data is done in a significantly faster way.
Advanced tasks
As seen above, GLPI now integrates the basic building block concerning automatic inventory.
However we have not yet taken over the advanced tasks allowed by previous projects.
Here are a few points about these tasks:
- Network discovery and inventory: now independently configurable by GLPI agent via Toolbox interface.
- ESX query, soon supported by same interface
- Collection (WMI, files, registers): not supported.
- Tele-deployment: not supported.
For these last two features several scenarios are possible:
- First of all, keep the previous plugin (if this one is updated)
- Use our transition package. A fork of the FusionInventory plugin (GLPI inventory plugin) will be made available. It will redirect the classic inventories to the native part and keep the advanced tasks.
In our roadmap it is planned to work on rewriting of these parts, but as long as version 10 being almost done (and this substantial work), we are postponing their availability for a few months.