Agents or Scan Ranges

john5893 · 2012-10-19T17:36:25.000Z

Which do you prefer Agents or Scan Ranges? Currently we are using scan ranges and a remote collector, works fine however my server has lots of disk i/o while scanning. I’m thinking about trying the Agent is there a way to not have the Agent visible in the sys tray?

Thanks

dabeast · 2012-10-19T17:43:52.000Z

Agents are better for laptops that may or may not be on the network to scan. If you have a remote office but most of the machines stay in the office, I would keep it on the scan range for the remote collector.

Currently there isn’t a way to convert the computer record from an agent scan to a computer record with the normal scan - all history will be lost.

john5893 · 2012-10-19T17:48:31.000Z

Yikes I will stay with scans for now.

Thanks

Jared-Busch · 2012-10-19T17:49:15.000Z

You are still going to want scan ranges or you will never know when something new gets dropped on the network without your knowledge.

If your server can not handle the extra I/O from Spiceworks in addition to its normal workload, then spin up a WIndows 7 VM dedicated to just SW. Only give it 1 or 2 processors and don’t worry about how long it takes to perform scans.

john5893 · 2012-10-19T17:56:00.000Z

It’s a dedicated box no other roles assigned to it. That’s exactly what we do, it’s constantly scanning network ranges. We have over 1100 devices across several ip ranges so it takes a bit.

Jared-Busch · 2012-10-19T17:58:10.000Z

You do not want 1100 devices all sending in remote collector information either.

In this situation, if performance is an issue, I would spin up another SW install and move some of the scan ranges to it. just make it a remote collector for the first.

john5893 · 2012-10-19T18:08:52.000Z

We have the 1100 devices split between the collector and server. Are you saying the collector and server are not capable of that many devices?

john5893 · 2012-10-19T18:10:36.000Z

None of the scans overlap they are staggered throughout the week running in the middle of the night mostly. We added the collector because the server was not able to process the scans on it’s own in a timely fashing due to the number of ranges we have. Since the addition of the collector things seem to be working fine.

Jared-Busch · 2012-10-19T19:03:39.000Z

Follow you now. That is basically the way I would set it up. I am confused about what you are worried about then.

john5893 · 2012-10-19T19:12:52.000Z

My original question was about best practices for Agents and potentially elimanating scans. Didnt think about random devices dropping on the network until you mentioned it. So for now I will use Agents only for laptop road warriors and continue using scans like I have them. Thanks for your help.