Obelinf vs Device42: Choosing the right infrastructure management platform for your team

Device42 has been a fixture in the infrastructure management space for years. It combines CMDB, DCIM, IPAM, and application dependency mapping into a single platform, with automated discovery agents that scan your network and populate the database without manual data entry. It is a capable product that solves real problems, and it has earned its place in many data centers and IT operations teams.

But the infrastructure tooling landscape has shifted in ways that matter to how teams evaluate platforms today. Device42 was designed as an on premises appliance that you install, configure, and maintain. Obelinf takes a fundamentally different approach: a managed platform that works from the moment you sign up, with no servers to provision, no agents to deploy, and no upgrades to coordinate. Understanding the practical differences between these two approaches will help you decide which one is right for your team.

What Device42 Does Well

Device42 is comprehensive. Its automated discovery can scan your network using multiple protocols, including SNMP, WMI, SSH, and APIs, to find devices, software, and dependencies. It builds application dependency maps automatically by analyzing network traffic and connection data. It tracks IP addresses, VLANs, subnets, and DNS records natively. It manages SSL certificates, software licenses, and even shared passwords. For a team that wants one tool to cover as many infrastructure management use cases as possible, Device42 delivers on that promise.

The automated discovery is genuinely valuable. If you have thousands of devices spread across multiple data centers and cloud accounts, agents that discover and update the CMDB automatically save your team from the soul crushing work of manual data entry. Device42 supports discovery across Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS, network devices, storage arrays, hypervisors, and public cloud environments like AWS and Azure. The breadth of its discovery capabilities is one of its strongest selling points, and it is something that pure documentation tools without an agent based approach cannot match.

The application dependency mapping is another differentiator. Device42 can visualize how applications connect to servers, databases, storage, and network services, building a map of your application topology without requiring your team to manually document every connection. When you are planning a migration or troubleshooting an outage, understanding those dependencies quickly is critical. The dependency maps give you a starting point that would take weeks to build by hand.

Device42 also offers integrations with over thirty tools, including ServiceNow, Jira, Ansible, Puppet, Splunk, PagerDuty, and most major ITSM platforms. If your organization already runs a mature ITSM stack, Device42 fits into that ecosystem. Its REST API covers most of the data model operations, and the platform includes webhook support for event driven workflows.

The Deployment and Maintenance Reality

Device42 is self hosted software. You deploy it on your own infrastructure, whether that is a physical server, a virtual machine, or a cloud instance. It runs on CentOS or RHEL with a bundled PostgreSQL database. The installation involves downloading an ISO, setting up the operating system, configuring network settings, and running through a setup wizard.

That is not trivial, but it is doable. The real cost comes after installation. You are responsible for operating system patches, application updates, database maintenance, backup configuration, monitoring, and troubleshooting when something breaks. Device42 recommends regular backups of the PostgreSQL database and the application files. You need to plan for disk space, memory, and CPU capacity. You need to handle TLS certificate renewal for the web interface. You need to ensure the discovery agents have network access to all the devices they are supposed to scan.

For teams with dedicated infrastructure engineers, this is manageable. For smaller teams, or teams where the people managing infrastructure are also responsible for project work, incident response, and everything else, the ongoing maintenance burden is a real cost. Every hour spent patching the Device42 server is an hour not spent on actual infrastructure work.

There is also the question of scale. As your infrastructure grows, the Device42 server needs more resources. Discovery agents generate data continuously, and the database grows over time. You need to plan for storage capacity, memory allocation, and CPU headroom. If you manage multiple data centers across different geographic regions, you may need multiple Device42 instances or a centralized deployment with agents reaching across WAN links. Each of these scenarios adds complexity to the deployment design.

Device42 also offers a hosted option through Freshworks (the company that acquired Device42 in 2024), but it is not their primary delivery model. The self hosted appliance is the core of the product, and the hosted option carries different pricing and feature considerations. Most Device42 deployments we see are still on premises, which means the operational burden is something every prospective customer should evaluate honestly.

Feature Comparison

Both platforms cover the core infrastructure management use cases. Device42 includes automated discovery, CMDB, DCIM, IPAM, application dependency mapping, software license management, certificate management, password management, and a REST API. Obelinf includes IPAM, DCIM, circuit management, virtualization tracking, cable management, contact management, tag based organization, changelog auditing, interactive topology diagrams, rack elevation visualizations, and a REST API.

The biggest feature difference is automated discovery. Device42 scans your network and populates the CMDB automatically. Obelinf does not have automated discovery. You enter data through the interface or the API. For teams with thousands of devices, automated discovery can be a significant time saver. It populates the CMDB quickly and keeps it updated as things change. For teams that prefer to control exactly what goes into their source of truth, manual and API driven data entry provides more accuracy and avoids the noise that automated discovery can introduce. Discovery agents sometimes detect devices you do not want tracked, or they miss context that a human operator would include.

Obelinf offers capabilities that Device42 does not. The changelog in Obelinf records every create, update, and delete with user, timestamp, and field level diffs automatically. There is no configuration required. It is always on, always complete, and always available. Device42 has audit logging but it is not as granular or as consistently surfaced throughout the interface. If compliance and auditability are important to your organization, the automatic changelog is a meaningful difference.

Cable management is another area where the platforms differ. Device42 handles basic cable connections between devices and patch panels. Obelinf provides cable management with both physical and logical connection tracking, and those connections are reflected in the interactive topology diagrams. When you create a cable connection in Obelinf, the topology diagram updates immediately to show it. The visual feedback helps you catch cabling errors before they become problems.

The user interface is a significant practical difference. Obelinf is a modern web application built for speed and keyboard driven workflows. A command palette lets you jump to any entity type instantly. Full text search works across every entity and attribute, and results are connected, so you see the full context of what you are looking for. Rack elevations and topology diagrams are interactive and update in real time as your data changes. Device42’s interface is functional but feels older. It uses a traditional server rendered approach with more page reloads and less responsive navigation. The workflow for common tasks like finding a device, viewing its connections, and editing its attributes often involves more clicks than it should.

Pricing and Total Cost

Device42 pricing is based on the number of managed devices and is structured as an annual subscription. It is not cheap. For mid size deployments managing a few thousand devices, Device42 costs tens of thousands of dollars per year. Enterprise deployments with ten thousand or more devices can run well into six figures annually. The pricing scales linearly with the number of devices, so growth means higher costs every year. If your infrastructure is expanding, your Device42 bill expands with it.

On top of the license cost, you need to factor in the infrastructure to run Device42. A production deployment requires a server with adequate CPU, memory, and disk. You need backup storage. You need monitoring. You need engineering time for maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting. If a device fails or a database corruption occurs, you are responsible for recovery. The total cost of ownership is meaningfully higher than the license price alone, and many teams underestimate the operational side when they budget for the initial purchase.

There is also the cost of discovery agents. Device42 uses remote collectors and agents to scan network segments. In large distributed environments, you may need multiple collectors deployed across different locations, each requiring its own server resources and network configuration. These costs add up, especially when you factor in the ongoing management of the collector infrastructure itself.

Obelinf offers a free tier for personal use and paid plans for teams. Because Obelinf is a managed platform, there are no infrastructure costs. No servers to provision, no backups to configure, no upgrades to schedule, no collectors to deploy. The subscription covers everything. For most teams, the total cost of an Obelinf subscription is significantly lower than the combined license and operational cost of a Device42 deployment, especially when you account for the engineering time required to keep self hosted software running.

When Each Tool Makes Sense

Obelinf is the right choice if your team wants infrastructure management without the operational burden of self hosted software, if you prefer a modern interface with keyboard driven workflows and real time search, and if you want predictable pricing that does not penalize infrastructure growth. It is a strong fit for teams that value zero maintenance, automatic changelog auditing, and true multi tenancy with organization level isolation. If your team spends more time maintaining tools than using them, or if you are starting fresh and do not want to invest in both license costs and operational overhead, Obelinf is worth a serious look.

How Obelinf Solves This

Obelinf is a network and infrastructure management platform built for teams that want the capabilities of a modern CMDB and DCIM without the operational burden of self hosting. There is nothing to deploy, configure, update, back up, or monitor. You sign up through your browser, and it works.

The data model covers sites, racks, devices, interfaces, cables, IP addresses, subnets, VLANs, VRFs, circuits, and contacts. Everything is connected. Search works across every entity and every attribute, so you can find a device by serial number, an IP by hostname, or all circuits from a specific provider in seconds. The interface is fast, responsive, and designed for keyboard driven workflows, with a command palette that lets you navigate without reaching for your mouse.

Rack elevation visualizations give you a graphical view of your data center layouts. Interactive network topology diagrams show how your devices connect at the physical and logical levels. Both update in real time as your data changes. Every create, update, and delete is tracked automatically with user, timestamp, and field level diffs, giving you a complete audit trail without any configuration.

Multi tenancy is built in with full organization isolation and role based access control. Different teams, clients, or business units get their own space with their own data, and you control who can see and do what. The REST API covers the entire data model with consistent patterns for filtering, sorting, pagination, and search, making integrations with your automation workflows straightforward.

Obelinf scales from a small homelab to thousands of devices across dozens of locations. It is free for personal use and ready for your team at obelinf.com. If you are tired of maintaining infrastructure tools instead of using them, give it a try and see how a managed approach changes your workflow.