rackmonkey

know your racks

RackMonkey is a web-based tool for managing racks of equipment such as web servers, video encoders, routers and storage devices. Using a simple interface you can keep track of what's where, which OS it runs, when it was purchased, who it belongs and what it's used for. No more searching for spreadsheets or scribbled notes when you need to find a server: RackMonkey can quickly find any device and draw a rack diagram of its location. RackMonkey is free and open source (licensed under GPL).

Take a tour of RackMonkey…

RackMonkey v1.2.4

RackMonkey v1.2.4 was released on 2008-07-20. New features include:

Improved interface
Device search
Device and Rack copying
Filtering of Device view
MySQL 5 support (in addition to SQLite and Postgres)

Download v1.2.4 | v1.2.4 Documentation | Change Log | Older releases
MD5 (rackmonkey-1.2.4.tar.gz): 500181007f8d7bf68077fd810138b6a7
SHA256 (rackmonkey-1.2.4.tar.gz): b0dcb83d545755c72fb4a5948cb2e43033e0bfe3283d2b40bc66185ea925c635

System Requirements: RackMonkey server software works on pretty much any Unix or Unix-like system, including FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X, NetBSD and Solaris. The interface is web-based and works with a wide range of browsers on Mac, Unix and Windows. For more information see the installation guide.

News

2008-10-03 RackMonkey v1.2.5 is coming along nicely. Improved CSS for printing has been committed to svn and you can see a sample print of the devices table (PDF). Racks can now be numbered from the top, as well as the bottom. Work also continues on Excel export (see screenshot, right), application and row support. v2 is not forgotten, and I should have an update on its progress in the next few weeks. To stay up-to-date, join the RackMonkey announce list.

2008-09-01 Thanks to a busy few months, RackMonkey has passed 2,000 downloads on SourceForge. You can see more detailed statistics if you're interested.

Rack view in RackMonkey v1.2.5 2008-08-09 Work has began on v1.2.5. A early version of the improved rack view is shown on the left. Planned enhancements include full app and row support, easier deletion of items and basic formatting in notes. Excel export is also currently undergoing testing.

RackMonkey v2 development work is at an early stage. The first features to be added to this release will be recording of network and power information as well as support for a wider range of device sizes (e.g. 1.5U switches). Look out for version 2 in subversion soon. A preview release incorporating these features is planned for late September.

Thanks to everyone who has written to me with comments and suggestions for RackMonkey. My apologies if you haven't received a reply; I am currently working through my mail backlog.

2008-07-25 The roadmaps for v1.2.5 and v2 are currently being reviewed. If you have any thoughts on what should be included, please submit a feature request.

2008-07-20 RackMonkey v1.2.4 has been released. See above for information on downloading. I'm still updating some sections of this site to reflect the new version, but full documentation is already available.

2008-07-07 RackMonkey v1.2.4 RC1 is now out. The final release of RackMonkey v1.2.4 should follow in the next two weeks.

2008-06-28 RC1 has taken longer than I hoped as I've not had much time for coding. However, all code changes have now been made, which leaves the documentation. I now have a copy of VMWare on my Mac, which is making it much easier to test many platforms. RPM and pkgsrc (NetBSD) support is still at an experiemental stage and won't be part of the release of v1.2.4.

2008-06-06 I am back from holiday and working on RC1: I hope to have it ready for release in the next ten days.

2008-05-27 I've completed roughly half the work needed for RackMonkey v1.2.4 release candidate 1 (RC1). I will be on leave for about a week and will then finish up the release of RC1 in early June. Barring the discovery of any issues this will go on to be the final release of v1.2.4. To hear when the final release of v1.2.4 is available, join the RackMonkey announce list.

2008-05-18 RackMonkey v1.2.4 Preview 2 has been released.

2008-05-17 Final testing of RackMonkey v1.2.4 Preview 2 is in progress. As well as fixing a number of bugs it adds documentation for using MySQL.

2008-05-14 A couple of issues have been found in RackMonkey v1.2.4-pre that prevent you from creating new racks. If you have downloaded this release you should read the errata for a description of how to work around them. I haven't been very well the last couple of days, so haven't had a chance to work on the next preview release of v1.2.4. I hope to hope to get some time over the weekend. Thank you for your patience, I hope RackMonkey v1.2.4 will be worth the wait.

2008-05-06 RackMonkey v1.2.4 preview is now available. Release Highlights: Improved interface, device search, device and rack copying, filtering of device view and experimental MySQL 5 support. Give it a try and let me know what you think. The final release of v1.2.4 is expected to be released before the end of May.

2008-05-03 The release of RackMonkey v1.2.4 preview will be on Tuesday 2008-05-06, with the final release before 2008-05-26.

2008-04-26 While working on the documentation for v1.2.4 I decided it made sense to update the way configuration is handled by RackMonkey. Configuration information (such as the database to use) is now stored in a text file (rather than a perl module), so can reside anywhere on the filesystem. Once the new configuration system is tested I'll proceed with the preview release of v1.2.4.

2008-04-20 Coding for the preview release of v1.2.4 is now finished. Updates to help and install instructions are in progress. Once these are complete I will be making a preview release of v1.2.4 available for download.

2008-04-13 After a burst of coding, v1.2.4 templates are finished. There are a few more things to add and tidy up before the v1.2.4 preview is released, hopefully this week.

RackMonkey is written as one word, not as Rack Monkey, but including the Rack Monkey version may help search engine users find this page. :)