EOL Asset DB – TAGs

The IT Assets Database was replaced by the IT Admins CMDB and is EOL / End of Life, no further development will be done on this project.

While TAGs are nothing else then a rather flat table with just a field for a shorter TAG name and a longer description, they are actually way more powerful and useful as it seems at the first glimpse. You certainly can add notes to the TAGs, but more important is that you can relate almost any other entry in the asset database to such a TAG.

This eventually helps you to group entries cross-table together and document a way bigger picture.

For example – think about a ERP system – you might have a database server, various databases, additional front-end web servers, a middle-ware server, additional related special printers possibly and DNS aliases. Create a single TAG and relate all those entries to this TAG. You can see the TAGs they are related to and jump to the TAG as well as look at the TAG and jump to all those related entries.

The same proofed to be helpful you have e.g. issues with a certain hardware model – let’s say a specific laptop series seems to bluescreen regularly and eventually you had some fun with the vendor support to tell them this seems to be a regular occurrence and e.g. a main board issue – create a TAG for it, instruct the team to create incidents every time they come across one and TAG them together. You get rather quick related information and might realize that this happens e.g. with a specific hardware revision or possibly your default image that you deploy might be the issue.

In any case – it helps to see through the huge amount of information you come across and need to document.

Data field and reference overview

  • Active / Disabled
  • TAG (short tag name / identity)
  • description
  • Notes
  • Related objects
    • those can point to almost any object / module in the database