Network Devices vs. Other Assets

The terms network device and other asset are both used to describe hardware items like routers, switches, printers, and custom device types you define. For the purposes of Cherwell Asset Management, the primary difference between the two terms is that network devices are SNMP-enabled devices and available for discovery.

Other assets are any devices or assets that you manually add to your Cherwell Asset Management configuration. In earlier versions of Cherwell Asset Management, you may have manually added hardware devices that are actually SNMP-enabled.

In general, if your hardware items are SNMP-enabled, we recommend discovering them and viewing the information that is collected on them. Manually create other assets and specify their properties.

Users of pre-12.0 versions may want to discover network devices, then delete other assets that are now duplicates of the discovered network devices.

Groups and Reports

You can create groups of network devices as well as groups of other assets, and filter by groups in reports.

In CAM Administrator, you can select a network device and then open its Network Device Summary report. Reporting includes a Network Devices report as well as an Other Assets report for viewing information about your non-computer hardware items.