How good is Spiceworks??

[rodrigoachacon]

Hello Everyone.

I know my subject line seems crazy, but read my post and it will make sense.

I used Spiceworks in the past and I love it, there are two things that I love the most that is Free and the community, there is not a single question that I posted in the past that I don’t get a respond and a result and I thank everyone for that, but now I am having a different situation and I would like to know if Spiceworks is the way to go.

Before I elaborate more I want you all to know that right now at my job we don’t use SpiceWorks, but I am pushing my supervisor to install it and use it on our network…

Now, here is the deal!!

Can I use Spiceworks to monitor my network (routers, switches, firewall, etc) essentially want we want to accomplish is to be able to know what device (s) is/are hugging bandwidth or what device (s) needs to go because is getting old, basically no only at the server level but at the whole network level, my experience with Spiceworks has been more as a ticketing system, but I know you can do more than that…

We are open to any suggestion, but we are not looking for a sales pitch!!

Thank you!

[gregoryhhall]

Yes Spiceworks has plugins that will handle your needs, and the reports can be customized to suit your needs. Device monitoring is good and has vendor specific stuff to get you the info you seek.

I vote you give it a try and see.

[rodrigoachacon]

@gregoryhhall

Yes Spiceworks has plugins that will handle your needs, and the reports can be customized to suit your needs. Device monitoring is good and has vendor specific stuff to get you the info you seek.

I vote you give it a try and see.

Hey Gregory.

Thank you for the reply, do you suggest to have Spiceworks install on a server that nobody mess with?

We have a virtual environment and I can create a server and call it Spice (this might sound naughty to some employees here LOL) but I was wondering since I am trying to use it to monitor my network and all that perhaps will be a good idea to have the App isolate it when it comes to the rest of the servers and their functionality within our network, that make sense?

Thank you!!

[joshbutler2330 (gfxrelay)]

Go with Nagios, then Icinga, then Opsview, FAN, Groundworks, Op5, ZenOss, and every other heathen solution. Then after a year of hemorrhoids and aneurisms of frustrations, realize Spiceworks can do it all and far better. Also the support is way better.

[gregoryhhall]

yes it is best separated so you can adjust resources as needed without disturbing the other servers…

[rodrigoachacon]

@joshbutler2330

Go with Nagios, then Icinga, then Opsview, FAN, Groundworks, Op5, ZenOss, and every other heathen solution. Then after a year of hemorrhoids and aneurisms of frustrations, realize Spiceworks can do it all and far better. Also the support is way better.

Thank you for your reply…

That’s the reason why I am asking because basically I want to keep my hemorrhoids intact!!

Have a great day.

[doctor-who (RAM.)]

The biggest benefit of spiceworks is the community, a collective of 3+ million techies who are willing to help. Honestly it is awesome.

As Gregory has said there are tons of plugins you can use to modify the product to your specific desires, what makes these plugins so great? They are made by us, for us, to use in specific situations like what you’re looking for.

Why do I bring this up? Great question Rodrigo, as GFXRELAY pointed out, Nagios is a great choice. We love to pitch Nagios here, honestly we truly do, it may possibly be better than spiceworks software for monitoring. But wait? We’re talking about spiceworks right?

http://community.spiceworks.com/help/External_Alerts

You can integrate Nagios into spiceworks ;-), make one centralized location where you use EVERYTHING. Use spiceworks to keep everything in one place, good luck my man. Use spiceworks, and use Nagios, you won’t regret it.

[rodrigoachacon]

@TheROD.

The biggest benefit of spiceworks is the community, a collective of 3+ million techies who are willing to help. Honestly it is awesome.

As Gregory has said there are tons of plugins you can use to modify the product to your specific desires, what makes these plugins so great? They are made by us, for us, to use in specific situations like what you’re looking for.

Why do I bring this up? Great question Rodrigo, as GFXRELAY pointed out, Nagios is a great choice. We love to pitch Nagios here, honestly we truly do, it may possibly be better than spiceworks software for monitoring. But wait? We’re talking about spiceworks right?

http://community.spiceworks.com/help/External_Alerts

You can integrate Nagios into spiceworks ;-), make one centralized location where you use EVERYTHING. Use spiceworks to keep everything in one place, good luck my man. Use spiceworks, and use Nagios, you won’t regret it.

Thank you very much!!!

[rodrigoachacon]

@gregoryhhall

yes it is best separated so you can adjust resources as needed without disturbing the other servers…

Greg.

I read the spec to install SpiceWorks for less than 100 users and I don’t see anything related to disk space, any suggestion???

[rodrigoachacon]

The ROd…

I forgot to mention that I do love the help I get in this forums, my situation when it comes to my career got complicated after I lost my job 4 years ago and now that I finally found a job I realized how my knowledge diminished and I have to say that Spiceworks has been a GREAT help!!!

Thank you every one of you!!

[doctor-who (RAM.)]

Oh no problem dude any time that’s literally what we are here to do, help each other. I’ve made gutsy registry modifications based on suggestions from the community I would’ve NEVER done on my own, nor figured out on my own.

Our knowledge will diminish as we move forward with technology, but it also doesn’t stay current, 4 years has gotta hurt man, I feel for ya. 2 years IT experience here, still learning :-).

[gregoryhhall]

I have 20 devices and my Spiceworks DB is about 1GB so i would think about 6GB or so for 100 devices…