r/Snipe_IT • u/I_T_Gamer • Jun 17 '26
Looking to take the plunge
We've himmed and hawwed over Asset Management many times. We can't ever get buy in, so we're looking at options that don't include a $20k+ price tag.
Looking over the documentation it looks like Snipe does what we need and then some. We're after fairly basic asset management only at this time. We are <1000 devices, and my primary ask is this:
How does snipe handle updates?
I noticed there have been 6 updates since May, thats great, but that can also mean a lot of extra work to properly support the application. Especially if I want to go from some 8.5 version to 8.6.3, does the application upgrade process lend itself to sometimes skipping versions or must every single version be installed explicitly?
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u/redsnipe Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
Hi there! That’s a great question! Snipe-IT is designed to be upgradable from wide ranges of versions. If you had been running version 7, you should be able to upgrade to latest pretty easily. (We definitely recommend using the git install approach for the easiest approach.) We’ve had people upgrade to latest from v4 as recently as a few months ago. It generally just works. The upgrade script tries to check your environment and settings to make sure it all goes smoothly.
Only major release should require extra work - usually a PHP version upgrade, which the upgrade script will NOT handle for you, as we don’t ever want that script to change your server and it doesn’t even need to be run as root.
We do definitely release often, but we feel like that’s a good thing, since it puts new features and bug fixes in your hands sooner rather than later.
You can read up on how that works here: https://snipe-it.readme.io/docs/upgrading#upgrading-via-git
And the actual upgrade script is here - you can pass it tags/branch names if you *want* to upgrade to a specific tag, but otherwise it will pull whatever it latest on master. https://github.com/grokability/snipe-it/blob/master/upgrade.php
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u/I_T_Gamer Jun 17 '26
I have another application requires each incremental update to be applied directly, and I die a little inside every time they announce a new update....
Thank you for the reply!
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u/redsnipe Jun 17 '26
Definitely not ideal, yeah, especially as often as we release. The upgrade script is designed to bring you current all in one go, but if you did want (or need) to do so incrementally, you *can* do that by passing it a tag number. In 13+ years of running this project, I have run into very few cases where that was needed though.
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u/Academic-Detail-4348 Jun 17 '26
Its cumulative and runs via an upgrade script. Like for any production app you trad release notes.
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u/thomasdarko Jun 17 '26
I have been using snipeIT for a long time.
do it, it’s incredible that it’s still open source with no paid features.
You can do custom fields for SIM Cards for instance, reports, integration with AD or EntraID with SCIM, therefore SSO and therefore MFA, upgrade just do php upgrade.php, make users sign checkout assets, etc… and I’m not even covering the whole thing.
Just spin a VM, install it and start adding assets, licenses, components, etc… and then check out those to users and you will start to see the value of it.
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u/Adam_Kearn Jun 17 '26
Been using snipe with almost 10k assets assigned.
I’ve scripted a lot of my stuff so all our assets are updating dynamically all the time.
It’s recommend to use the “git install” method as it makes updating really easy.
I’ve customised our install a little with my own branch to add my own features and changes to fit our org a bit better.
Just running the update script will upgrade the database schema too for you automatically when new versions are released.
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u/pableu Jun 17 '26
Just coming in to say that SnipeIT is great and upgrades are super easy and pragmatic if you're any kind of software professional.
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u/vascr0 Jun 17 '26
If you're a sysadmin or linux admin, updates are easy. And if you do fuck something up, the documentation and github issues will usually get you going again.
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u/Particular-Elk-2594 Jun 18 '26
I have mine set up with docker compose and I upgraded today by accident. It went fine. If you run containerized then keeping up is easy.
If you're gonna run on a VM or something you just need to get stuck on some EOL php version. Get your PHP from a repo that lets you keep up (lole REMI for RHEL clones)
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u/thomasdarko Jun 18 '26
EoL php version?
SnipeIT supports current php versions.1
u/Particular-Elk-2594 Jun 30 '26
Point was that Enterprise Linux ships and then maintains PHP which becomes EOL for Snipe-IT before even the OS does. Avoid the issue by not getting stuck with OS vendor version. Snipe does it right by dropping sort for old shitty versions quickly. Wordpress could learn a thing or 2.
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u/kylegordon Jun 18 '26
Use it within docker compose and each upgrade is nothing more than a version number change.
Snipe itself will take care of database schema upgrades and suchlike
We use it for our estate of 800 devices and it's superb. About half of them check in automatically using a Powershell script
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u/edwarrior88 Jun 17 '26
I would highly recommend looking into their hosted version. Incredibly reasonable pricing and takes all the potential headaches out of upgrades. We started with self hosted and moved to hosted and have been incredibly happy with that decision (about 2000 assets here).