# 2 Inventory

#### Overview

You can keep the inventory of networked devices in Zabbix.

There is a special *Inventory* menu in the Zabbix frontend. However, you
will not see any data there initially and it is not where you enter
data. Building inventory data is done manually when configuring a host
or automatically by using some automatic population options.

#### Building inventory

##### Manual mode

When [configuring a host](host), in the *Host inventory* tab you can
enter such details as the type of device, serial number, location,
responsible person, etc - data that will populate inventory information.

If a URL is included in host inventory information and it starts with
'http' or 'https', it will result in a clickable link in the *Inventory*
section.

##### Automatic mode

Host inventory can also be populated automatically. For that to work,
when configuring a host the inventory mode in the *Host inventory* tab
must be set to *Automatic*.

Then you can [configure host items](/manual/config/items/item) to
populate any host inventory field with their value, indicating the
destination field with the respective attribute (called *Item will
populate host inventory field*) in item configuration.

Items that are especially useful for automated inventory data
collection:

-   system.hw.chassis\[full|type|vendor|model|serial\] - default is
    \[full\], root permissions needed
-   system.hw.cpu\[all|cpunum,full|maxfreq|vendor|model|curfreq\] -
    default is \[all,full\]
-   system.hw.devices\[pci|usb\] - default is \[pci\]
-   system.hw.macaddr\[interface,short|full\] - default is \[all,full\],
    interface is regexp
-   system.sw.arch
-   system.sw.os\[name|short|full\] - default is \[name\]
-   system.sw.packages\[package,manager,short|full\] - default is
    \[all,all,full\], package is regexp

##### Inventory mode selection

Inventory mode can be selected in the host configuration form.

Inventory mode by default for new hosts is selected based on the
*Default host inventory mode* setting in *Administration* → *General* →
*[Other](/manual/web_interface/frontend_sections/administration/general#other_parameters)*.

For hosts added by network discovery or auto registration actions, it is
possible to define a *Set host inventory mode* operation selecting
manual or automatic mode. This operation overrides the *Default host
inventory mode* setting.

#### Inventory overview

The details of all existing inventory data are available in the
*Inventory* menu.

In *Inventory → Overview* you can get a host count by various fields of
the inventory.

In *Inventory → Hosts* you can see all hosts that have inventory
information. Clicking on the host name will reveal the inventory details
in a form.

![](../../../../assets/en/manual/web_interface/inventory_host.png){width="600"}

The **Overview** tab shows:

|Parameter|<|<|<|<|Description|
|---------|-|-|-|-|-----------|
|*Host name*|<|<|<|<|Name of the host.<br>Clicking on the name opens a menu with the scripts defined for the host.<br>Host name is displayed with an orange icon, if the host is in maintenance.|
|*Visible name*|<|<|<|<|Visible name of the host (if defined).|
|*Host (Agent, SNMP, JMX, IPMI)<br>interfaces*|<|<|<|<|This block provides details of the interfaces configured for the host.|
|*OS*|<|<|<|<|Operating system inventory field of the host (if defined).|
|*Hardware*|<|<|<|<|Host hardware inventory field (if defined).|
|*Software*|<|<|<|<|Host software inventory field (if defined).|
|*Description*|<|<|<|<|Host description.|
|*Monitoring*|<|<|<|<|Links to monitoring sections with data for this host: *Web*, *Latest data*, *Triggers*, *Problems*, *Graphs*, *Screens*.|
|*Configuration*|<|<|<|<|Links to configuration sections for this host: *Host*, *Applications*, *Items*, *Triggers*, *Graphs*, *Discovery*, *Web*.<br>The amount of configured entities is listed in parenthesis after each link.|

The **Details** tab shows all inventory fields that are populated (are
not empty).

#### Inventory macros

There are host inventory macros {INVENTORY.\*} available for use in
notifications, for example:

"Server in {INVENTORY.LOCATION1} has a problem, responsible person is
{INVENTORY.CONTACT1}, phone number {INVENTORY.POC.PRIMARY.PHONE.A1}."

For more details, see the [supported
macro](/manual/appendix/macros/supported_by_location) page.