ralph dev

Ralph, the responsible leader of the children in `Lord of the Flies`.

Ralph is an asset management system for your data center. It lets you see what hardware and software is installed. It also lets you keep track of who is using every device, for what, and how much it costs.

Ralph’s database can be accessed through a web interface, a RESTful API and through command line tools, the most important of which is the discovery command, which lets Ralph gather information about your data center automatically. You can also export and import parts of the database into different formats.

Change Log

1.1.12

Released on December 20, 2012.

• Dell PowerEdge servers supported

• introduced pricing groups for disk shares

• interpolation of variables in preboot files supported

• simplified deployment workflow (no issue tracked based acceptance involved)

• mass deployment

• discovery fixes

1.1.11

Released on December 5, 2012.

• Fix bugs in the search and add device forms

1.1.10

Released on December 5, 2012.

• support for SNMPv3 in discovery

• DHCP config improvements: proper hostnames from PTR records; support for syncing entries and networks from a specific DC only

• DNS/DHCP addresses tab redesigned for usability and performance

• improved search for software components and discovering software versions

• discovery fixes

1.1.9

Released on November 26, 2012.

• Fixes for discovery regressions from 1.1.8

• DiscoveryWarnings introduced

1.1.8

Released on November 22, 2012.

• system-level storage detection stored in the OperatingSystem component

• improved CPU information in DonPedro Windows agent

• CPU information is stored in history for financial reports

• DNS entries can be edited on the Addresses tab for every device

• CMDB: impact report introduced, API for CI changes, layers and types

• Installed software packages reported by Puppet are stored in the inventory database

• Base64 support for compressed Puppet fact values

• Minor bugfixes

1.1.7

Released on November 8, 2012.

• Stability improved for discovering SSG firewalls

• ralph_dhcp_agent.py is now compatible with Python 2.4

• Uses the forked django-powerdns-dnssec package for improved PowerDNS support

• Xen discovery support fixed (memory was reported in wrong units)

• IPMI discovery improved for Sun and Supermicro servers

• Minor CMDB improvements

• Minor bugfixes

1.1.6

Released on October 29, 2012.

• CMDB fixes: owners not required when saving a CI, cycles in relationships are detected, only manual changes generate tickets in external trackers

• fixed issue #183: “Unknown” rack unsupported

• device admin fixes: model validatation, saving uses priorities

• paramiko library used for SSH connectivity instead of the ssh fork

• minor device report fixes

• unit tests improved

1.1.5

Released on October 19, 2012.

• bumped Django version to 1.4.2

• fixes order of database migrations

• fixes a problem in Django 1.4.x with built-in unit tests failing because of settings used

• minor CMDB fixes

• more unit tests

1.1.4

Released on October 15, 2012.

• role properties available in API

• virtual CPU count in the main ventures report

• deprecated devices now have a zero monthly cost

1.1.3

Released on October 10, 2012.

• cloud usage is visible in the main ventures report

• several minor fixes in UI and new plugins

1.1.2

Released on October 8, 2012.

• Donpedro introduced: a new dedicated discovery agent for Windows. Works as a background Windows service; a lightweight alternative to SCCM

• a new plugin to discover Xen hypervisors (with support for information about pools and hardware usage)

• a new ssh_linux plugin that discovers Linux machines by logging into them; an alternative to Puppet storeconfig

• lots of minor bugfixes in UI, CMDB and discovery

1.1.1

Released on September 24, 2012.

• Price catalog updated: history of changes tracked, a more intuitive UI for prices per unit of size

• bug fixes in discovery and UI

1.1.0

Released on September 19, 2012.

• Deployment of new machines using PXE implemented

• CMDB: change acceptance

• DHCP can be served and reconfigured remotely

• Improved reports: new report types for devices, main menu entry for generic reports, a details view for devices in reports

• API supports throttling

• A new component kind, OperatingSystem, with information about CPU, memory and disk storage visible from the operating system

• Operating system components included in pricing

• OpenStack pricing now includes pricing margins

• Extra costs are now a dictionary

• Improved date pickers in UI

1.0.6

Released on August 20, 2012.

• Pricing: cached prices updated after changes in the catalog; component price calculation includes custom sizes when relevant

• ralph commands no longer display the unhelpful “Error opening file for reading: Permission denied” message

• Usability improvements in editing CI relations

• Preliminary timeline view for CMDB added

• Git configuration change from Puppet agent now knows if a change was successful

• minor bugfixes

1.0.5

Released on August 13, 2012.

• OpenStack plugin now accepts OPENSTACK_EXTRA_QUERIES setting, containing a list of tuples in the form (url, query) of additional data sources to check.

• make the discovery plugins use soft delete

• the proxmox discovery plugin now counts local storage used

• added a “delete” link in the addresses view

• positions in racks are now numbered from the bottom

• CMDB: enabled removing relations, faster git handling

• bugfixes in CMDB and UI code

1.0.4

Released on August 08, 2012.

• edit links for devices and components

• soft-deletable devices

• a view showing physical layout of racks

• add a filter form in the networks view

• small usability improvements in the history user interface

• added a “zabbixregister” command for automatically creating hosts and host templates in Zabbix

• bugfixes in the CMDB

• bugfixes in the discovery plugins

1.0.3

Released on August 01, 2012.

• a rudimentary reports tab on device lists to filter devices according to specified rules

• venture tree collapsible

• CMDB integration scripts integrated into framework

• CMDB supports distributed plugins

• minor fixes in the Web app

1.0.2

Released on July 23, 2012.

• ralph chains command to list available plug-in chains

• fixed regression from 1.0.1: settings-local.py works correctly again

• ability to create new devices from the web application

• several minor bugfixes

• added cmdb charts for dashboard

1.0.1

Released on July 18, 2012.

• ralph management command introduced as a shortcut to python manage.py

• ralph makeconf management command introduced to create configuration from a template

• PyPI package fixed by including all resources in the source package

• minor fixes for the SQLite backend

• minor documentation fixes and updates

1.0.0

Released on July 16, 2012.

• initial release