Hi @genedupre,
I understand your concern, but I think this is more of a conceptual problem and it relates to identity (or how to identify devices): If your devices can have identical hostnames, how would your IT users know which one is which?
So I would say we are talking about identity here, not inventory - at least conceptually.
Mender supports having several identity attributes (and you can choose one of them at the time in the row of each device in the UI for quick identification). What I would suggest is that you use both mac and hostname as identity in your scenario. This way they will be unique as a set (because mac is unique) and you can choose hostname in the UI).
To test it quickly, log in to your device and open " /usr/share/mender/identity/mender-device-identity. Then append something like (I have not tried this, some tweaking may be required):
hostname_string=$(/bin/hostname -s)
echo hostname=$(hostname_string)
Then restart the Mender client and accept the device in the Mender UI. You should be able to select hostname from the gear icon.
Does this resolve the issue?