mossj Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 Spiceworks - Free Network Monitoring Software for Network Management Spiceworks just rules, and this is why.. - Its a free, Very easy to install helpdesk and inventory system. - It will take a inventory of all your items and software automaticly and you can set it to scan every week or so, or every day when the mood takes you... It also Loads the OU's out of AD so you don't have computers everywhere. (unless your AD is messy...) - It will tell you when machines have out of date AV, when printers are running low on toner, when hardisks are running out of space. It will email you when servers go offline, and will email if you ask it to about many other events! - Its a free, Very easy to install helpdesk and inventory system. - Its helpdesk software will pull tickets out of an inbox automaticly, you can set custom notifications either to you or back to your users. You can add custom fields to the tickets, You can assisgn the tickets to other techies. - Its front end is very clean and ties in with AD so your genrel users won't have anouther account to remember. - Custom plugins, Spiceworks allows there community members to publisht here own plug ins for it. - Reports you can run reports on just about anything it records. - IT Services & Purchases list - A Database for storing all that information that usually gets lost. bottom line, I Lub it
bertster Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 Tried Spiceworks but found the free version with all the ads ran very very very slow, apart from that its features are great, but too heavy on the network for daily use in our environment. Have now switched to SysAid. Better product for our requirements and its free! 2
mossj Posted March 27, 2009 Author Posted March 27, 2009 (edited) Tried Spiceworks but found the free version with all the ads ran very very very slow, apart from that its features are great, but too heavy on the network for daily use in our environment. Have now switched to SysAid. Better product for our requirements and its free! Recent patch fixed the slowness issue (especially with the inventory), as well as adding custom tools, plugins, multiple dashboards etc hence why im only recommending it now... Edited March 27, 2009 by mossj
bertster Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 Good news if the recent patches fix the speed / resource issue with Spiceworks, however I'd rather be free of the adverts - which will have an impact on the network.
mossj Posted March 27, 2009 Author Posted March 27, 2009 (edited) The advert is a small 300px by 300px advert in the top right barely Network hogging.... And on top of that only visible to admins... Also I just had a quick nose at sysaid you can only have 100 users, and 2 admins for free (we have 1800 users and 4 admins). Whilst in Spiceworks your unlimited, the only extra thing you get for paying is the advert removed. Edited March 27, 2009 by mossj
timzim Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 Spiceworks is still very slow, despite the updates, especially the inventory which is painfully so Also it makes IE devour vast amounts of memory on my PC...
big_nath Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 i tried spiceworks the other day after readin another post, it was too slow for me too.
Hightower Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 Isn't SpiceWorks (at least the free version) only recommended for networks with less than 250 PC's?
big_nath Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 Isn't SpiceWorks (at least the free version) only recommended for networks with less than 250 PC's? i tried it on the admin network (150ish PC's), still slow.
mossj Posted March 27, 2009 Author Posted March 27, 2009 Curriculum network 700ish pc's fine and dandy. Don't know what you guys are testing it on.... but it takes a shorter amount of time to load the helpdesk than it does to load google.... here at least. Inventory takes a bit longer but its not used as much. Running it on a win server 03 box (P3, 512mb), with only intranet stuff running in addition.
Hightower Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 Curriculum network 700ish pc's fine and dandy. Don't know what you guys are testing it on.... but it takes a shorter amount of time to load the helpdesk than it does to load google.... here at least. Inventory takes a bit longer but its not used as much. Running it on a win server 03 box (P3, 512mb), with only intranet stuff running in addition. I'm starting to get the feeling that you're selling the software for them....
fiza Posted May 12, 2009 Posted May 12, 2009 Just setup Spiceworks in a VM and it runs just fine. Perfect for a cash strapped IT Dept!!! Adverts are really not too obtrusive (and only visible to admins). Users get a nice clean portal to submit tickets updates to tickets are instant and the user gets to see them without refreshing screen. For about £150 per year you can have the Adverts replaced by your School logo. Tried various free ones (Web+Center, Sysaid) but think this will do the job for us.
mossj Posted December 22, 2009 Author Posted December 22, 2009 Just thought I'd bump this as many other people are now using spiceworks and I may just get away without being accused of 'working for them'.
gotenks1321 Posted December 22, 2009 Posted December 22, 2009 Using Spiceworks at one school and it runs pretty well. A little slow at first but it was scanning the whole network for the first time so excusable lol I do have one slight problem with it though and that's to do with scanning. When it does it's scheduled scan it seems to fail to probe and pickup the details of the majority of devices. However when I rescan them manually in the Inventory it works perfectly Will have to play around some more but if anyone's come across that and fixed it, would be much appreciated to know how
dirtydog Posted December 23, 2009 Posted December 23, 2009 i have to say i always found it slow too but we only used it for inventory etc occasionally so it didnt matter too much. however now ive installed it on a VM and setup helpdesk etc it is super fast so im dead impressed! ive left it scanning over the holidays but when terms starts ill probably slow it down a bit. watch this space!
glennda Posted December 23, 2009 Posted December 23, 2009 Tried Spiceworks but found the free version with all the ads ran very very very slow, apart from that its features are great, but too heavy on the network for daily use in our environment. Have now switched to SysAid. Better product for our requirements and its free! we stopped the ads by blocking thisiswhyitsfree.spiceworks.com!!
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