System Inventory, Monitoring & Service Ticket System: Spiceworks

Spiceworks
http://www.spiceworks.com/

It was only after I wrote this that I realized that Tim at Daily Cup of Tech took a gander at this software back in November...(how did I miss that!?)...I think I am performing a more in-the-guts review, so I think both of our posts are valid ;)

Description from Spiceworks' website:

Spiceworks is free network management software designed for networks with up to 250 devices. It combines inventory, monitoring, help desk and community Q&A into one easy-to-use application. It enables you to quickly and conveniently inventory the hardware, software, and patches that reside on your network; monitor your network for new software, license compliance violations, low disk space, offline servers, low printer supplies; report easily on the information you need to manage your network; track network issues and your projects with trouble tickets; ask questions to the Spiceworks community of IT professionals worldwide. Spiceworks requires no agents to be installed and managed.

Audience:
Small business Network/System Administrators who need to keep track of their assets, but not spend a lot of dough.

How could this be free?
There is a sidebar in the web-app that presents you ads, but they aren't intrusive. These ads generate revenue back to Spiceworks, allowing you to take advantage of this excellent freebie.

Didn't you just review a network inventory tool not too far back?
A comment left by an anonymous contributor in my post about Winventory and Lansweeper mentioned the name of Spiceworks as another possible alternative to both of these tools.

However, Spiceworks is a bit more than a network inventory tool. It is also a device-based service ticket system in addition to filling the role as a rudimentary device monitoring tool.

My first impression of SpiceWorks is whoa, this is a slick interface, and it really is. The graphics are smooth, pictures fade in/out of focus when hovered over, and the interface just looks plain cool. The software can be accessed through http, and gives you a pop-up notifier during the day down by the system clock to keep you abreast of your tickets, alerts, and scan status.

Now that I've gotten over how smoooooth it is, lets get to the guts.

Spicework's overview can be found here.

Network Inventory
You can use Spiceworks (from here on out, referred to as 'SW') to use a series of WMI calls to inventory your remote computers for installed hardware, CPU speed, software, IP address, serial number (with direct links to the computer's specific support page (at least for Dell, I would like to see how it works with others), and a lot more.

Once the scan is complete, you can then browse through the computer's various panes to view computer domain, installed services, software, hotfixes, etc. - generally just giving you a quick overview of what is on the computer.




There is even a 'notes' section attached to each discovered device so you can enter specific information about it. For example, "Rob's secondary computer, scheduled for replacement at yadda yadda yadda". In addition, there are fields defined in the 'general' tab so that you can enter pricing, asset tag, location and purchase date info which can be queried later.

When you set up a scan, you can specify alternate credentials and set up different subnets to scan. Great if you have some computers, servers, etc. that have different administrative passwords you wish to use. However, if you have a computer sitting in the middle of a range that has an alternate administrator account (or password), you should probably save the subnet scan, end its range at the IP below the exception, then create a new scan that includes just that workstation, and then continue the previous subnet scan range with a new scan starting at the IP above the exception. This could be kludgy if you have a variety of administrative scenarios on your network.

The scan takes awhile to complete depending on the number of devices that are out there, but what you get back is awesome...the information is concise, and easy to view. Each device features a 'pop-up' balloon that gives up some pertinant information regarding it.

Monitoring
If you have enabled some of the built-in monitors, your scan will alert you as to which computers that were found during the scan that tripped them...for example, there is a built-in monitor that shows 25% or less disk space. If this alert is tripped, the device will show up with an exclamation on the device picture. Pretty easy to use!

The monitors operate more or less at a global level. When you have one enabled, it is watching for trigger events on every single device that the particulars of the monitor may apply to (for example, a disk drive agent won't trip on printer, but will on all discovered computers that it can access). You can focus these monitors on some pre-defined groups ('All servers', 'All workstations', 'All printers', etc.). However, I don't think that this is quite granular enough...

I believe that this would become more of a nuisance than anything else, since you may want to watch services or drives on only a small group of servers or workstations, and not worry about all the other workstations...otherwise you are going to get a LOT of emails if you aren't careful!

You can configure some custom alerts, but they are pretty basic, and don't allow you to go into too much detail. It would be nice if there was a way to monitor Event Log entries, but I suspect that would generate a lot more traffic...

Ticketing
If there is a problem with a device (or software), you can generate a rudimentary ticket for whatever is having the issue (or even just create a ticket out of the blue - - perhaps you want to schedule maintenance on a device). This is a nice feature if you don't want to buy a ticketing system, but need some basic way to track and report on your support tickets for your inventoried devices over time.

Browsing for information
A very handy feature of SW is the ability to browse through a tree-esque view which can allow you to locate a specific piece of information by merely browsing through various queried categories. This is useful as a different approach to gathering a particular piece of information on a device.


Probably the best use of this is browsing under the 'software' heading. You can find a particular application, then drill down to the group of computers that have it installed, or enter licensing information, which again, can be queried against.

Reporting
Probably -the- most elegant function of SW is the reporting mechanism. There are some pre-canned reports like 'Closed tickets', 'Computers without Anti-virus', 'Software compliance', 'Tickets by device/software', etc....

The beautiful thing is that you can select pretty much any field to insert into the report with hardly any trouble...adding new criteria is easy (no worrying about learning SQL!). There are a ton of pre-defined criteria selectors to choose from. Good enough for the casual to intermediate network or support admin.

This would be a good place to find out who has what software installed...

And, you can export these reports to PDF, CSV, and XLS...!

Easy to find support forums
The link for the support forums are built into the structure of the main interface (not just an ancillary link, mind you!), and keep you updated (again via a pop-up balloon) of how many posts have been made recently. Hovering over the pop-up balloon shows you a preview of the posts.

This is the very best part - the developers are constantly reviewing user requests and issues, offering new features with every release. Talk about supportive! They rate each feature request by 'spiciness' - i.e. the more spicy a topic is, the more it is determined that the feature is wanted/needed by the user community! Each member can vote for each feature (yay or nay, spicy or bland) to help influence the next release.

Likes

• The interface. This thing is smooth, and easy on the eyes.
• The ease of setting it up. I was up and running literally within 3 minutes.
• The pre-canned reports, and the ability to look at some printer specific info, like current toner usage.

Anything to complain about?
Unfortunately, yes, but I think that these are things that could easily be addressed. Spiceworks is like a jack-of-all-trades but expert at none, but this isn't to say that the software should be put asunder. Rather, the opposite is true...the more you use it, and comment about it on their webforums, the better SW will become! Out of the "box" for free, it FAR surpasses anything else out there competing for your pretend dollar!

• (low) Be able to search for logged on user from main screen, rather than use the 'browse' to get to this info. Aside from 'computer name' or 'ip address', this is probably the #1 thing that system administrators would like to search on.
• (low) Ability to create a custom category (and have it show up on the main screen), and assign our own graphics. Right now, I have my AS/400 listed in 'Others', which has a phone icon (the AS/400 itself has a network switch icon).
• (medium) Ability to create our own 'collections' (but not limited to one collection assigned per device) of devices so we can create dept. specific groups or categorize servers that fill certain roles, etc.
• (medium) Allow users to 'plug-in' their own scripts, exe's, etc. so we can interface SW with a variety of systems management and remote control tools.
• (medium) 'Windows user' field should show 'domain\user' rather than the 'owner' information...I'm not sure if this is intentional or a bug.
• (medium) Ability to set an alternate credential on a machine-by-machine basis, rather than set up exclusion-based subnet/range scans to compensate.
• (high) Ability to set up multiple technicians to access SW, instead of anyone logging in as a single account - SW developers are supposedly working on this feature for the next release.
• (high) More granular system monitors - including Event Log monitoring, also, allow us to have more control over the email alerts that are sent.

The thing that sets Spiceworks far apart from many other network management tools is that they seem to be very passionate about getting their product and name out there. They recognize people who spread 'The Word' (...no, that is not the reason why I'm posting this entry!). They are really appreciative of those who show their love of this great free product.

Alternates

• Winventory/Open-Audit (computer inventory only)
• Lansweeper (computer inventory only)
• Neutex NetPoint (computer inventory only)