Connect to each switch on an increasing counter (or skip if offline).This script contains four main logical points: The SolarWinds TFTP Server tool (already installed for switch firmware upgrades)Ĭombined together, a batch script runs infinitely in a loop, connecting to switches, dumping their MAC Address data, and uploading it to the cloud.
Hp mac address lookup windows#
Windows Server 2012 R2 (standard install).
Hp mac address lookup install#
Required a Linux box or to install software not standard on our machines (such as Perl)Īs such, I was faced with building an automated tool using installed software (or portable software) on my machines.Cost enough to make it a no starter (pretty much anything over 20 dollars).However, most of the software did not work for me in the end due to the following restrictions: There is software out there to help with this. The backend of this data is from many places, but focusing on just the location of the device in the network, the idea is to avoid having to ask every switch if it knows of a MAC address, but instead to just look up the MAC in a table of all the switch data. Thankfully, between the various data sources consolidated on one web page, staff can verify call activity and be able to know where said device is even located, down to the chain of switches it is uplinked to. All well and good, until you have a single machine you can’t find.Īs these are fresh machines, the only thing that is known is what is on the boxes that are scanned.
As such, automated scripts are ran on the devices to install software, force calls to the cloud, and backup that data our selves. Given the extreme value of even a handful of these devices, checking compliance is a serious concern. One thing that staff in this facility work on is getting these machines set up and reporting to anti-theft services in the cloud. There are many ways to solve the problems you’d face, and I’d like to go over one way that required a lot of out of the box thinking to get setup. Today I’d like to discuss my technological workflow I deployed in this environment.Īs you may be able to gather, we have a lot of space for computers, as far as the eye can see, and that isn’t even including the imaging racks that can handle 32 laptops in a much denser configuration.Īs you may imagine, set up of a network to accommodate network booting, imaging, and control of thousands of machines is quite a burden. In fact, one of this blog’s first posts was about adding in a Synology to the environment. I’ve recently come off a long-term role of getting thousands of machines set up and imaged, all day, everyday, all untouched until they reach the facility.