Spiceworks' free network monitoring: What's the catch?

Monitor your network devices for problems (in this case, low ink levels) with Spiceworks.

I'm sure I'm going to get in trouble with the CNET IT team for this, but I just set up my computer to run Spiceworks, a business network scanning and monitoring application. Spiceworks scans a PC's local network and reports on the health of various items. You can tell which printers are running out of ink, which PCs have out-of-date virus scanners, and so on.

To monitor PCs, you need to be a systems administrator with a network administrator login for the computers in your office. I don't have that access, but I was able to peer into the data the system returned on my own PC, as well as on printers and a few open-access computers here in the office. I found the level of information both deep and clearly presented. For example, administrators with this tool will easily be able to see which applications are installed at the company and which users are running old versions. It can also kick off Windows remote control sessions for hands-on tech support.

Spiceworks also has a full help-desk system through which users can submit service requests. The system then lets you assign and track tickets until they are done.

You can set up alerts for devices across your network.

I confess that Spiceworks isn't wholly Webware: It's software that must be installed on a PC and which runs in the background (download link). It does not, however, require that the monitored PCs run any software aside from the built-in administrative processes that run in Windows by default. One Web angle is that the user interface is browser-based. So the administrator can run the management console from any network-connected PC that can reach the monitoring station.

What's most Webware-ish about this product is its cost: It's free. Web-served ads run on the administrators' interface. I found them unobtrusive. Making money from management software like this via advertising is certainly an interesting (that is to say, highly risky) business model. But if you're trying to run an office full of computers, you could do far worse than this easy-to-use, yet still comprehensive, system and network management product.

Home network "admins" might want to check out Network Magic (review; download).

Spiceworks will be presenting at the Office 2.0 Conference next week.

[bcross64]

It really works!

This thing just plain works. If you're using Outlook especially to organize tasks, switch now. My company just implemented it today, and it works perfectly. Oh yeah. It also inventories your whole network. Minor detail. You owe it to yourself to check this one out. Make your job easier and switch to Spiceworks. And no, I don't work for Spiceworks.

[ITGIRL83]

IT'S AWESOME

I've been using Spiceworks for about a month now on a network of 150 devices. I LOVE it! It's made my daily job functions so much easier. Not only can I monitor software and hardware changes as well as general network changes but I can create reports to show my managers! I cannot believe this product is free! With the new v1.7 there is added licensing information and software compliance. The support you get from Spicworks is out of this world! I say download it now, what do you have to loose? It's FREE!!!!

[A_Halibut]

SpiceWorks, from everything that I've read both on the internet and in their online communities looks and runs like a great tool for a small IT shop. I've heard and read of the software being utilized for small companies with up to about 100 seats and maybe a couple of servers.

What I'm running into in my particular scenario really are the limits of the free software, no matter its good intent and thought out design. The discovery mode, being agentless, is a true achilles heal; being agentless means the system is dependent on WMI configurations, which, in any IT shop that goes beyond basic configurations, isn't always static. This plays into a potential nightmare scenario of feeding Spiceworks significant amounts of configuration time and labor to produce limited results.

Example: our company has three domains across four locations, multiple DNS's, managed firewalls, over fifty servers, about 600 workstations, and more than one subnet mask. Spiceworks, try as it might, can't, out of the box, handle this type of network. From hours (now turning into days) spent researching and scouring their forums and community it is, in theory, able to handle this type of environment but the sheer amount of time and human resource involved is staggering and limits its claim as "free." The thought "you get what you pay for" keeps running through my mind.

The real trouble is that the software has so much eye-candy (or manager bait is more accurate) in its multitude of colorful reports and promises that company brass not familiar or comfortable with true managed networks can throw more effort at this free software than it merits.