How to use Virtual Asset properties - modelNumber, vendorNumber, parent?

[!SuperB!]

Hi folks,

I think I’m finally up to speed with getting Virtual Assets added to SystemLink. It took a bit of trial and error, but happy with the results so far. Everything I did to get this to work leveraged code that Josh has here: https://github.com/joshuaprewitt/systemlink-asset-management-api.

I have figured out enough of the properties to at least get the server to recognize my assets. However, I'm curious if anyone can explain how the following properties are intended to be used?

• modelNumber* - integer
• vendorNumber* - integer
• location
• parent – string

modelNumber is bold which makes it required, but not sure what it should be set to. I have left it at default (i.e. 0) and that is working, but not sure what the intent is here. Same for vendorNumber. At a high level it seems I could just assign these myself and make sure like vendors and models use the same number, but if I don’t go through this effort does it matter? Does the server look at this for anything?

parent seems useful to provide a link what asset another asset lives inside of, but I’m not sure of the syntax to use. For items that SystemLink recognizes it is populating this in a manner similar to minionId (e.g. concatenating model, serial#, etc), but I don’t see this documented. For assets that SystemLink doesn’t automatically recognize is there something I can put here that will be meaningful? Or maybe SystemLink won’t pay attention to this field for Virtual Assets.

[JoshuaP · Accepted solution]

To be clear SL requires a modelNumber OR modelName. Same is true for vendor. Some buses like PCI have both model numbers and names, so it can be very useful to set them both, however this isn't true for all bus types. If your assets don't have vendor or model numbers feel free to omit those values. I don't think you need/should set them to 0.

The parent in most cases is just the name of another asset (i.e. PXIChassis1) in the same system. No need to specify an ID and setting the parent is optional. In addition, the parents are sort of a special case when it comes to asset utilization. Utilization for any child asset will automatically also mark the parent as in use.

[!SuperB!]

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@JoshuaP wrote:

To be clear SL requires a modelNumber OR modelName. Same is true for vendor. Some buses like PCI have both model numbers and names, so it can be very useful to set them both, however this isn't true for all bus types. If your assets don't have vendor or model numbers feel free to omit those values.

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Okay perfect. This is very helpful. I will stop setting both.

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@JoshuaP wrote:

The parent in most cases is just the name of another asset (i.e. PXIChassis1) in the same system. No need to specify an ID and setting the parent is optional. In addition, the parents are sort of a special case when it comes to asset utilization. Utilization for any child asset will automatically also mark the parent as in use.

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I like the idea of parent for my child assets in order to record utilization. So it sounds like it is simply a matter of setting this to the name of the parent then and ignore the concatenation observed on other assets. Thanks!