Colo/Dedicated Server Management Addon
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Anonymous shared this idea 12 years ago
- Integrations
- 79 Comments
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While WHMCS does in fact allow us to manage the sale and
billing for Dedicated Servers, we do not have the ability to actually
manage them from within our billing platform. This would be ideal for
allowing us to have a single point of access for Client, Tickets, and
Inventory management. Some of the below entries are suggestions for
overall functionality:
Asset tracking / Server inventory
- I keep track of server serial numbers anyways, it would be nice to
keep a table of server details that are linked back to the serial
numbers. The serial number details might have more information on
specs, notes, location (see below), etc. You could see which customers
have had that serial number. It could show if it's currently assigned
to an active customer, terminated, decommissioned, or available. The
nice thing would be is if we had some older out-of-date servers it would
be a nice way to allow customers to see inventory and order them at a
discount. Once the order comes in it wouldn't be available and not show
up as orderable.
The accounting ramifications could be nice as well, I'm not an
accountant but I'm sure they'd like to see more details as far as when
it was ordered, PO #, cost, vendor. You could run a report showing
costs and revenues of equipment as well. When equipment is
decommissioned you know you made X amount back on the initial
investment, or how long equipment is lasting.
Who knows, maybe a batch of servers comes in with faulty hardware and
you see a pattern, you could see which customers are on servers from the
same PO # and email them about preventative maintenance.
Location Mapping
-
While it doesn't need to be complex on day 1, it'd be nice to also
group serial numbers by location. room : row : cabinet : U
Then you could drill down to the cabinet and see what is in it. To add
complexity you can see capacity (u) and other infrastructure (switches /
pdu). Keep in mind that the asset tracking knows sold/unsold so you
could pull up a row or cabinet and know what is available
rDNS/IP management
- Keep track of IP management, allow customers to set their own rDNS for IPs assigned to them. (PowerDNS)
Network Control
control / disable / label / switch VLAN on switch ports
- disabling a switch port for a server that is suspended / enable on un-suspension
- relabel / change VLAN on the switch port when assigning it to a server
billing for Dedicated Servers, we do not have the ability to actually
manage them from within our billing platform. This would be ideal for
allowing us to have a single point of access for Client, Tickets, and
Inventory management. Some of the below entries are suggestions for
overall functionality:
Asset tracking / Server inventory
- I keep track of server serial numbers anyways, it would be nice to
keep a table of server details that are linked back to the serial
numbers. The serial number details might have more information on
specs, notes, location (see below), etc. You could see which customers
have had that serial number. It could show if it's currently assigned
to an active customer, terminated, decommissioned, or available. The
nice thing would be is if we had some older out-of-date servers it would
be a nice way to allow customers to see inventory and order them at a
discount. Once the order comes in it wouldn't be available and not show
up as orderable.
The accounting ramifications could be nice as well, I'm not an
accountant but I'm sure they'd like to see more details as far as when
it was ordered, PO #, cost, vendor. You could run a report showing
costs and revenues of equipment as well. When equipment is
decommissioned you know you made X amount back on the initial
investment, or how long equipment is lasting.
Who knows, maybe a batch of servers comes in with faulty hardware and
you see a pattern, you could see which customers are on servers from the
same PO # and email them about preventative maintenance.
Location Mapping
-
While it doesn't need to be complex on day 1, it'd be nice to also
group serial numbers by location. room : row : cabinet : U
Then you could drill down to the cabinet and see what is in it. To add
complexity you can see capacity (u) and other infrastructure (switches /
pdu). Keep in mind that the asset tracking knows sold/unsold so you
could pull up a row or cabinet and know what is available
rDNS/IP management
- Keep track of IP management, allow customers to set their own rDNS for IPs assigned to them. (PowerDNS)
Network Control
control / disable / label / switch VLAN on switch ports
- disabling a switch port for a server that is suspended / enable on un-suspension
- relabel / change VLAN on the switch port when assigning it to a server
80 Comments
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It would sure beat the cumbersome way we have to mange our servers now. I am not interested in running 2 or more billing systems either just to cover our bases.
+1
I like WHMCS and think WHMCS should expand more into the dedicated server, colocation and whole datacenter market. It should incorporate features from UberSmith and the features included in HostBill's Colocation & Dedicated Server Manager:
http://hostbillapp.com/features/colocation-and-dedicated-server-manager.php
If WHMCS wants to make this an addon and charge extra for it we are ok with that too but for a larger hosting company it is not practical to have multiple billing systems.
WHMCS has been great but this feature would really make our workflow much more efficient. All features documented above are great!
We do design, programming work and a lot of hosting, colo and data center management.
- Traffic graphing for network switch port (dedicated server/colocation ports via cacti)
You've been able to do both of those for 2 years with an available addon.
- Power PDU (allows clients to power on/off power port - dedicated server/colocation)
APC & Raritan power control integrated into both client area and admin side is also available as an addon
- Switch Port Control (enable/disable Cisco switch ports)
Thats going to be available soon as an addon :)
Some people start small hosting companies with a low budget and grow from there; with an add-on like this they can do it better.
As well as improved server features as discussed above, I would love to see a more involved IP address management in the software to keep track fo which Ip's are allocated to which customers, and more importantly that they are paying for them (if you have a price set for IP's). Currently we have to use a google spreadsheet with 5000+ IP's to keep track of which IP's are used for which servers/domain/clients and for what reason (justification), and then make sure we regularly audit this list against WHMCS accounts to ensure IP's are being paid for, or when people cancel set the IP's to free again in the spreadsheet.
Infact for a "datacentre edition" you could have a whole asset manager built into WHMCS which not just for IP's but for server hardware also. With 600+ dedicated servers it would be good to tie a specific asset to a specific active dedicated server product, noting down the spec of the server, who supplied it, cost, warranty information, and then when a client cancels its is free'd up as stock for a new order, again we have to use google docs for this right now but doing it inside WHMCS makes more sense...