Spiceworks is a free network monitoring utility that I have started using one of my client’s networks. Spiceworks makes the software free by selling adds withing the application. The adds aren’t intrusive and I may find them useful at some point as they seam to be good companies and very relevant. There is a paid version if you don’t wish to see the adds.

The install was quick and it uses a web interface that is very simple. There is a set of steps to get started with the software and there are videos and instructions for each step. Once it is installed, you can give it Domain credentials, and any other credentials it needs, and then an address range and it proceeds to scan your network. You may need to open some ports in you client firewalls which can easily be done with a Group Policy change. It will also scan some of the other devices on your network. WAPs, Firewalls, switches, etc. You may need to provide credentials, but it can get most of it’s info from SNMP.

Once the scan is done, there is a wealth of information available to look through. Hardware age, brand, BIOS dates, installed software, whether your virus definitions are up to date, NIC traffic levels, and much more. You can create custom reports on almost any detail you can think of. You can also use an interesting tool the software has to compare computers. This would be useful in the case that you have 2 similar computers and you are trying to figure out why something is working on one computer and not on the other.

One of the network management tools you can use is alerts. Again there are a bunch of canned alerts that you can use, but you can create one for any detail you want. Disk space warnings, servers going off-line, software installs, you can even get an alert when WeatherBug is installed if you wish. The alerts can be emailed to you if you like or they can just show in Spiceworks. I would expect that one of the top requests will be for SMS alerts, so hopefully they add that soon. I really like this feature as I get an email when my servers go down much sooner than I would normally get a call.

The software also includes a built in help desk interface. I haven’t taken the time to set it up, but it is a web interface that allows you to create,manage, and update help desk tickets. It also includes a second web interface for users to create tickets with. Then you can run reports, send updates to users or your boss, and track time spent on projects. This feature alone may be worth the time it takes to set up the software. Very cool.

This software has quite a few features many of which I haven’t even started using such as contract management, access to white papers and forums, and to-do lists, so if you are looking for a simple network management utility, Spiceworks is one I would recommend.

Thanks to Handy Solo for bugging me to write this post. It was fun.