Serving as a browser and management center for your infrastructure, the Inventory Navigator presents an accurate picture of the assets discovered within your data center. You can view and manipulate objects in the APTARE IT Analytics database through this single navigation window. This view provides access to summaries and reports, plus the ability to manage objects.

Inventory objects and groups are associated with default reports that offer relevant data or information for the selected object. You can customize the display of specialized reports associated with the object. For groups of objects, you can review data for short-term goals such as performance and longer term goals, such as trends in backup storage failures. You can also quickly toggle between the Inventory reports and an Inventory list view which displays all the collected inventory objects for a category. You can also perform management functions such as add, delete, and assign attribute values to objects within the view.

A: The Inventory provides two views that you can easily toggle between. The List View displays all the collected inventory objects for a category. This view also offers management functions such as deleting objects and assigning attributes to objects. The Reports view displays a default set of reports that offer categories of relevant reports for the selected object. See Working with the Inventory Reports View and Working with the Inventory List View.

Q: How does using the Inventory view differ from browsing through the reports?

A: The Inventory provides a customizable view of your collected data center assets. Once discovery and data collection has occurred, the Inventory is populated and you can examine it starting from a logical entry point. Each inventory object category is associated with relevant reports for the selected object. These reports can help to provide insights and then be leveraged to make strategic decisions. IT Analytics offers more than 200 standard report templates. The Inventory narrows the selection by object and allows you to immediately familiarize yourself with only the information you need. See About the Inventory Tab.

A: Search not only locates reports, templates and dashboards, it also looks through your data center inventory. Use Search to find specific hosts, arrays, deduplication appliances, VM guests, VM servers, LUNs, switches and backup servers. You can also search for data collectors and policies. Search is case insensitive, supports partial entries, and will display a list of potential matches using a string match. Results are displayed in a full search page that allows you to filter results further or start a new search. See also Navigating with Search.

A: The Hierarchy Panel organizes categories of information as collected from your data center. Use the toolbar to organize the display of your inventory. You can selected from pre-defined options or define a custom organization. Viewing your data center by host groups is also available along with corresponding management functionality. See Using the Hierarchy Toolbar to Organize Your Data

A: To use attributes to organize your inventory objects, you must create them (or use the pre-defined set), define values and then assign them. Location, a default predefined attribute is displayed on the Hierarchy Panel. This two-level selection, Location and Inventory Object Type, is displayed as an icon, but you must still create values and assign them to your inventory objects. See Assigning Attributes in the Inventory List View.

A: Several predefined attributes are included in the Portal software. These attributes cannot be deleted, however, you can modify a system attribute’s list of values to make the values relevant for your environment. See Editing or Renaming Attributes.