The first step to management, is to have an understanding of what you are responsible for managing. This is important when you are managing people, of course, but equally so when you are managing hardware. A good inventory will make sure no machine is forgotten when it comes to backups, monitoring, and every other task you will be seeing through.

Hardcopy

I am a true believer in the power of – paper & pencil. Lugging a laptop out to the data center floor is a pain, but paper is light-weight, fool-proof, and require no power. It will serve as a physical backup of the softcopy, and an easy way to demonstrate what you physically own.

Take a look at the paper you can download from D*I*Y Planner. In addition to first-class calendar and planner layouts that you can print and use for free, they have a user-submitted templates section. The Technology section has a few templates specifically for hardware inventory.

Any hardcopy you choose should detail what the hardware is, and where it is, at a bare minimum.

Softcopy

The softcopy version of your inventory will be important for scripting your installs. Keep it in a flat file if you have a small installation, or a database if you have many to keep track of. Just make sure you can get a list of machines, and some information about them from your command line.

What else?

What do you use to keep track of your machines? Let me know in the comments.