[Fusioninventory-user] Network inventory improvement: no mandatory SNMP model anymore

[Guillaume Rousse]

The FusionInventory network inventory task, which should be more 
precisely described as remote inventory through SNMP, has always been 
plagued by a critical limitation: SNMP models. Such a model enumerates 
mappings between SNMP OIDs and inventory variables, such as 'the 
location is available at OID .1.3.6.1.2.1.1.1.6.0', and was mandatory 
because there was no intelligence in the agent itself, making it unable 
to perform anything without this information. In order to inventory any 
kind of device, the relevant model had to be defined first and assigned 
to this device second, which was a problem in itself, as device 
identification was based on exact matching of SNMP SysDescr string 
only... (See [[Network discovery 
improvements]/news/2013/11/08/network_discovery_improvements]] for details).

Since the agent 2.3.4 release, we introduced simple but radical changes, 
using default hardcoded OIDs for most variables, and minimum 
intelligence for determining what to extract from the context. The agent 
is now able to retrieve almost every interesting information from any 
device out of the box, which is a huge improvement of the situation. 
Some specific pieces of information are still problematic:
-firmware version numbers seems way too much versatile to be 
automatically retrieved
- printers print counters seems also lack any kinf of standardisation
- printers consumable levels are easily extracted, but identifying them 
precisely is quite difficult

Network inventory without model was sofar only possible from 
command-line, through fusioninventory-netinventory executable, as the 
GLPI FusionInventory plugin didn't allowed to run an inventory task for 
devices without model. This constraint has been relaxed with 0.84+2.1 
release, and is now only enforced for agent whose version is less than 2.3.4
-- 
Guillaume