COS Inventory Ansible

Ansible-based deployment kit for two open-source services used to manage and document IT assets and equipment scheduling in research environments.

What is this?

This project deploys two complementary services:

• Snipe-IT — IT asset inventory management. Track hardware, software licenses, accessories, and components across an organization.
• LibreBooking — Resource and room scheduling system. Book equipment, lab space, and shared assets with a visual calendar interface.

Originally created as part of a sustainability initiative to increase transparency and accountability of resources in university research groups. This repository is now being released so other organizations can reuse it.

What to ask your IT department for

If you are a researcher or PI and want to evaluate this for your group, here are the prerequisites to discuss with your IT department:

• A Linux server with SSH access and sudo privileges
• Podman and podman-compose installed on the server
• Two DNS records (subdomains or paths) for the services
• Existing reverse proxy infrastructure to expose the services on ports 8081 (Snipe-IT) and 8082 (LibreBooking)
• SMTP relay or mail server for notification emails
• IT requirements regarding integration wit existing user managment systems

How the toolchain works

This repository ships shell wrappers in the bin/ directory that run Ansible inside a self-contained Podman container. No local Ansible installation is required. Simply add the directory to your PATH:

export PATH="$PWD/bin:$PATH"

After that, commands like ansible-playbook, ansible-vault, and ansible-lint are available.

For detailed deployment and operations guidance, see docs/ADMIN.md.

User directory integration

This project does not configure user directory integration (LDAP, Active Directory, SAML, SSO, etc.) because authentication setups vary widely across organizations. Both services support multiple authentication backends out of the box:

• Snipe-IT — LDAP/AD integration is built in; SAML and other providers are available via community plugins. See the Snipe-IT docs for details.
• LibreBooking — LDAP, SAML, OAuth, and local accounts are supported. See the LibreBooking Wiki for details.

Configuring user directory integration is left as a post-deployment step for the deployer.