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Camera Report VSM 7.0

Kim Armstead
Level 1
Level 1

Is there anywhere that I can run a report and pull ALL of the following information:

location

camera model

lens type

logical camera name

coverage type

ip address

mac address

firmware version

serial number.

Would I be able to build a report with this information on it? 

Thanks.

ka

9 Replies 9

Cory Blackman
Level 1
Level 1

Not all of that, but some of it:

- Yes Camera Location & Model maybe in / is in VSOM.

- Not Lens Type - but you can get that from the camera type indirectly, i.e. domes are what the specs say, 6000s are P-Iris others are DC-Iris, etc.  Not really possible for box style cameras as the lens varies - see project BoM?

- Yes Camera Logical Name maybe in VSOM.

- Not Coverage Type. (not sure what you mean exactly here).

- Yes Camera IP & MAC & Firmware version (v7.0.0 has bug on this) are in VSOM and Cameras.

- Not Serial# - but you can get that from the camera directly. (i hope i'm wrong).

In Manaement Console>Monitor>Device List you get:

Name|Vendor|Model|PTZ Supported|IP Address|Motion Detection Supported|Security|Number of Recordings|Admin State|Device UID

What you are building is known as a "camera inventory", every site should have one of these to manage assets.

Cory, We have 52 installations and over 1600 cameras total.  Is there a report that I can run from our central location that will yield the camera inventory?  Logging on to all the cameras or trolling through VSOM and filling this information in field by field isn't going to be practical for our location.

Please help.

Thanks.

ka

Kim, i don't know what to say, it should be *easy* i totally agree, but at the moment we have to pull that data from several places, that's why we do camera/asset inventories when we adopt a customer/site, it's of immense value.  When it does not happen early on one has the issue you face, and yours is quite a big deployment, however, that does not mean it should not be done.  I.T. can pull MACs and IPs from the network switches, v7 does a better job of collecting/presenting useful asset data, our company is skilled at such things, but it's obviously a tedious and time consuming process to do.

Cory, Would we be able to access the tables ourselves and build a report?  The tables are likely relational, right??  Could we dump the copies of the tables as of a certain date into a spreadsheet or into Access and run queries against them??  We had camera inventories for each station initially and, for the most part, those reports are still correct.  There have been nearly 100 cameras replaced due to defect since the beginning and, unfortunately, those inventories weren't kept up to date.  The new inventories would just serve to update our existing documentation. 

Are you familiar with the Camera Report under the Operations Link?  Would you think this report would produce a proper inventory?? 

Thanks.

ka

Yes, if your DB engineer knows how to do that on the MySQL database installed on the Linux server you could pull everything you need, or maybe Cisco will help on that if you have SmartNet.  Since you'all had a good start, then really only updates are needed, try using the Bulk Actions button in Cameras in VSOM to dump csv and compare.

(I have a company confidential way of quickly getting much more data like Locations, Names, Models, Firmware, Vendor, Serial#, etc. if a little downtime is scheduled for cameras - hint).

I have some perl scripting that I've created to gather model, MAC, FW and Serial Number directly from camera endpoints.

I'd love to dig my fists into the guts of the VSOM DB for you... but billable work is always top priority for me :-S

Best of luck.

Scott Olsen Solutions Specialist Bulletproof Solutions Inc. Web: www.bulletproofsi.com

Scott, Is your PERL scripting something you would be interested in sharing for free?

Thanks.

ka

Cory, Doesn't seem as though your 'company confidential' method would work for our agency.  We are a 24/7/365 shop and have no concept of 'a little camera downtime'. 

If you are knowledgeable about the Camera Report accessed via the Operations Link in VSOM, I would be very interested in how you might have tailored this report to create a proper camera inventory.

ka

Kim, we're just trying to help where we can freely, i can understand anyone's frustration trying to simplify an asset inventory especially on a huge deployment, Cisco needs to hear this and respond with the features we're all asking for, and some of us integrate these solutions for a living and may not give away certain things we don't "own" (but use). 

That all being said, i provided a hint, and i was joking about the "down-time", all recorders will continue to record, only the clients cannot view the live video feeds from each media server as it takes a few minutes to allow the data to be retrieved, but it requires knowledge of VSOM and the host OS, and if the environment is known it can be scripted.  It returns this kind of output per media server:

Location Name Model Firmware Version Vendor Serial Number

System.Houston.Branch56 GGFDArmory-108 Cisco HD IP Camera 6020 Series 1.1.1-3 Cisco Systems, Inc. VTW16467795

...

Again Cisco or anyone could get anything they want if they have/hire a DB engineer familiar with MySQL and the host Unix, this is just something simpler that a Security engineer with Unix knowledge can do.

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