Asset & CMDB
A living inventory of every asset you track — with the configuration items they depend on — so every change knows what it might affect and every contract has an owner who's accountable for renewal.
Two related concepts
Zentra distinguishes:
- Asset — a thing you own, lease, or pay for. Hardware, software, mobile devices, network equipment, contracts.
- Configuration item (CI) — anything you depend on for service delivery, including assets but also abstract concepts (a database cluster, a Kubernetes namespace, a business service).
Every asset can be promoted to a CI when you want to track its dependencies. Not every CI is an asset (e.g. “Customer-facing API” is a CI, not an asset).
Asset types
Asset types are configurable. Common types:
- Hardware — laptops, desktops, servers, monitors.
- Software — OS licenses, on-prem applications.
- Mobile — phones, tablets.
- Network — switches, firewalls, APs.
- Contract — MSAs, SOWs, vendor agreements.
Each type can carry custom fields (serial, MAC, OS version, license seats, etc.). Configure under Settings → Asset types.
Asset lifecycle
Assets move through a defined state machine. Default states:
received— the asset has arrived; not yet in use.deployed— assigned to a person or location and in active service.retired— taken out of service, awaiting disposal or already disposed.
Assets also track depreciation automatically. Provide purchase cost and useful-life years; Zentra surfaces the current book value alongside the original cost.
Discovery sync
Discovered records can be ingested via the discovery sync interface. Today this is a generic API endpoint that accepts asset records; out-of-the-box connectors for MDMs (Jamf, Intune) and RMM platforms are on the roadmap.
Discovered records are matched against existing assets by serial number or hostname. Conflicts go to a review queue rather than auto-merging — the cost of a false-merge in an inventory is high.
CMDB
The configuration item model (ConfigItem) holds typed CIs with these key fields:
- Type — server, application, database, network device, business service, etc.
- Environment — production, staging, development.
- Criticality — tier 1 / tier 2 / tier 3.
- Status — operational, degraded, retired.
- Owner — the team or individual responsible.
Typed relationships
Relationships are first-class records (CiRelationship) with a directional type. Common types:
depends-on— A breaks if B is down.part-of— A is contained by B.runs-on— A executes on B (app on server).
Relationships drive change impact analysis. When you submit a change against a CI, Zentra surfaces every CI that depends on it transitively, the business services it supports, and the team to notify.
Contracts
Contract assets carry:
- Vendor and account-manager contact
- Term start, term end, auto-renew flag
- Cost (annual, monthly, one-off)
- Owner — the person responsible for renewal decisions
Renewal alerts can be configured through the workflow engine to fire at fixed intervals before the term end and route to the named owner — not a generic shared inbox — and create a ticket in the procurement queue.
Asset permissions
Assets honor the same role-based access controls as the rest of the system. Common patterns:
- Agents can read all asset records and write within their team’s scope.
- Asset / procurement owners (admins or supervisors) have full write to contracts.
- Customers on the portal can see only the assets assigned to them.
Next
- Change & problem — how the CMDB drives change impact
- Automation — automate joiner / mover / leaver asset flows
- Webhooks & API — push asset events to your other systems