Alternatives to Spiceworks for hardware & software auditing
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I don't know if this has been discussed before. It's obviously not something that is ever discussed on Spiceworks.
I don't use Spiceworks for ticketing as I've written my own ticketing system.
I do use Spiceworks for software and hardware auditing. It's primarily this feature that I'm seeking an alternative to. Any suggestions?
What I'd really like to do is build something myself using various scripts that people have written and posted online. I just want information about all my PCs in a database (or even a CSV file) - hardware details (model number, serial number, CPU, RAM etc etc), software details (manufacturer, version, product key etc etc), user details (last logon name, last long time etc). I can't write the scripts myself as I'm not familiar with powershell,WMIC etc.
Spiceworks handles this ok, but I just don't like it and it my installation seems very unstable for whatever reason. It doesn't seem to work half the time, and it's overkill since I only need about 10% of its functionality.
I'm tempted to use Meraki Systems Manager more, which provides some info on PCs, and is free. But that has very limited functionality. LogMeIn Pro has some functionality, but is very expensive.
Any suggestions? What do you do for auditing/monitoring?
Ideally, any chance of someone developing a MangoLassi alternative to Spiceworks that runs on Linux, dumps everything into MySQL, uses minimal resources and is advert free?
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One tool to look at, very different from Spiceworks but does cover much of the same ground, is Meraki System Manager. Also free.
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Yes, I'm already using that and mentioned it in my post
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For networking monitoring, Nagios is pretty popular, albeit not the easiest to setup.
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@ajstringham said:
For networking monitoring, Nagios is pretty popular, albeit not the easiest to setup.
It's great for monitoring servers and statics/performance but it's not really the same type of network monitoring as spiceworks.
There are a few different solutions that are similar to spiceworks network scanning and preform much much better (not that that is saying much) but they all are are very pricey.
I'd really like to find some good opensource replacements someday.
ManageEngine has a lot of different types of products that might be worth looking at.
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I know SolarWinds has some tools that are popular, but they will spam the heck out of you, so beware.
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@ajstringham said:
I know SolarWinds has some tools that are popular, but they will spam the heck out of you, so beware.
As do most. Manage Engine does as well.
Though I have seen the worst from Zerto, never heard of them til a few weeks ago. but I have sworn them off now due to their horrible marketing. (about a call and an email from a different sales person almost everyday 2 weeks straight.)
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@ajstringham said:
I know SolarWinds has some tools that are popular, but they will spam the heck out of you, so beware.
Wait a second... what do you mean they will spam the heck out of you? I use Solarwinds Orion, Solar Winds Network Monitor, and Solar Winds Web Help Desk. I rarely receive emails from them
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@IRJ said:
@ajstringham said:
I know SolarWinds has some tools that are popular, but they will spam the heck out of you, so beware.
Wait a second... what do you mean they will spam the heck out of you? I use Solarwinds Orion, Solar Winds Network Monitor, and Solar Winds Web Help Desk. I rarely receive emails from them
Then you are the VERY rare exception. I used to get emails daily.
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@ajstringham said:
@IRJ said:
@ajstringham said:
I know SolarWinds has some tools that are popular, but they will spam the heck out of you, so beware.
Wait a second... what do you mean they will spam the heck out of you? I use Solarwinds Orion, Solar Winds Network Monitor, and Solar Winds Web Help Desk. I rarely receive emails from them
Then you are the VERY rare exception. I used to get emails daily.
Are the tools you are using free?
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@IRJ said:
@ajstringham said:
@IRJ said:
@ajstringham said:
I know SolarWinds has some tools that are popular, but they will spam the heck out of you, so beware.
Wait a second... what do you mean they will spam the heck out of you? I use Solarwinds Orion, Solar Winds Network Monitor, and Solar Winds Web Help Desk. I rarely receive emails from them
Then you are the VERY rare exception. I used to get emails daily.
Are the tools you are using free?
Yeah, I wasn't using the paid at the time.
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Does anyone here use their own scripts rather than 3rd party tools?
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@Carnival-Boy I dobut it. for the desktops side of things it's fairly easy to script with pstools or WMI to get the data and put in a text file. But the organization of it is the hard part.
Honestly I think a excel spreadsheet can be more accurate than spiceworks inventory anymore with the newer versions.
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@ajstringham said:
@IRJ said:
@ajstringham said:
@IRJ said:
@ajstringham said:
I know SolarWinds has some tools that are popular, but they will spam the heck out of you, so beware.
Wait a second... what do you mean they will spam the heck out of you? I use Solarwinds Orion, Solar Winds Network Monitor, and Solar Winds Web Help Desk. I rarely receive emails from them
Then you are the VERY rare exception. I used to get emails daily.
Are the tools you are using free?
Yeah, I wasn't using the paid at the time.
That's what does it. They don't spam customers.
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@ajstringham said:
@IRJ said:
@ajstringham said:
@IRJ said:
@ajstringham said:
I know SolarWinds has some tools that are popular, but they will spam the heck out of you, so beware.
Wait a second... what do you mean they will spam the heck out of you? I use Solarwinds Orion, Solar Winds Network Monitor, and Solar Winds Web Help Desk. I rarely receive emails from them
Then you are the VERY rare exception. I used to get emails daily.
Are the tools you are using free?
Yeah, I wasn't using the paid at the time.
Ok. I used paid versions so that explains the lack of spamming
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Does anyone here use their own scripts rather than 3rd party tools?
No but seriously considering that.
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@IRJ said:
@ajstringham said:
I know SolarWinds has some tools that are popular, but they will spam the heck out of you, so beware.
Wait a second... what do you mean they will spam the heck out of you? I use Solarwinds Orion, Solar Winds Network Monitor, and Solar Winds Web Help Desk. I rarely receive emails from them
Probably because you already drank the Kool-Aid. It's the *potential *customers they want.
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@Rob-Dunn
For a poor-man's inventory, you can use Open-Audit, it's all web and script based. It's not been updated in years, but it might do what you want.AND it has a Linux package (and appliance download!)
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@Rob-Dunn said:
@IRJ said:
@ajstringham said:
I know SolarWinds has some tools that are popular, but they will spam the heck out of you, so beware.
Wait a second... what do you mean they will spam the heck out of you? I use Solarwinds Orion, Solar Winds Network Monitor, and Solar Winds Web Help Desk. I rarely receive emails from them
Probably because you already drank the Kool-Aid. It's the *potential *customers they want.
Yeah, I mentioned it was because i was using the paid version in the next post
