1

Ok, I have been looking around to see if anyone else is experiencing the level of issues I am, but I am just about ready to go all nuclear on spiceworks.

I upgraded to version 7 last week (maybe two weeks ago) and the install was pretty typical, but after that everything went all pear shaped.

  1. It never seems to stop scanning
  2. over two-thirds of my inventory have scan errors or are unknown devices (most of which were properly known before version 7)
  3. it pegged the CPU on the VM i was runnng spiceworks on and made it unusable

I did (or at least appeared to) remedy that last problem by upgrading to the latest point release. But the first two are still issues.

Regarding inventory errors, as i said, I had almost my entire inventory sorted out prior to upgrading but now with this new scanning setup, spiceworks doesn’t seem to know what the hell anything is. It can’t seem to scan workstations that are on the same subnet and the same VLAN and the same domain as the spiceworks server using the domain admin credentials that spiceworks is running under. These seem like the easies thing to scan. It also can’t seem to scan SNMP printers that are set to use the default “public” community name, and when I try to add “public” spiceworks tells me it uses public by default so i don’t need to add it.

WELL CLEARLY ITS NOT, AND I DO NEED TO ADD/FIX IT, BUT IT WON’T LET ME!

(sorry to rage there, but when a program is not doing something and it tells me it is doing it, and with an attitude of “hey dummy, i know you setup better than you”, i tend to get a little mad)

I am really unhappy with not being able to tell spiceworks to use one set of credentials for one range of IP addresses, another for a different set, and then to use specific information for specific devices like i could before.

And I am really sick of getting messages implying its a firewall issue, when the machines in question are in the same network and all have their internal firewalls turned completely off.

I don’t know what i need to send in to help diagnose my problems but if I have to start over from scratch i’m going to be SUPER upset, because (to quote the internet) “Ain’t nobody got time for that” and i’ll just toss the entire damn thing until SW gets their act together with version 8

31 Spice ups
2

I too have and continue to experience many issues with SW 7. I will list them below.

  1. Never ending scans

  2. Cannot print reports and when they do print, there is a huge delay between me clicking print and getting the print dialog box

  3. I have set credentials on networking devices and my Cisco ASA firewalls, but it still doesn’t connect and inventory them. Keeps giving a log in error, even when I verify the credentials and test…still no go.

  4. Still getting numerous DNS entry changes daily showing up on my timeline. Running 7.0.01242, which is the latest build.

I to wish I could tell SW to use specific credentials for specific IP address ranges. I like this granular control. I sincerely hope that there is another update coming soon that will address some of these issues.

3

We’re still on 6.2. I haven’t seen or heard of people having these types of issues. Is it possible to go back to an earlier version?

4

All of y’all can get ahold of SW support if you’ve got questions. Realize this is new, and they did the best they could during the beta. Cut them some slack. Barring that, you could always go with another helpdesk system and pay out the wazoo for no good reason.

Your choice.

10 Spice ups
5

Have you even adjusted your scan settings? That’s the #1 problem I see with people complaining about scans is that they never bothered to fine tune their scan schedules. Also, you never make mention of which revision you are on.

Also, if you were having so many issues, have you contacted support@spiceworks.com yet?

6 Spice ups
6

Ross is right, contact support and these guys and gals are excellent in responding back and working with you on their issues. I had a few bumps after my upgrade, but I went from having 40% of my network inventoried to 85% after their assistance. The remaining bits are on my end, so nothing to do with the software itself. You’re getting the software for free along with the support so IMHO you really can’t complain too much.

5 Spice ups
7

Also looks like you haven’t posted any of your issues before too. If you have a problem or run into a glitch, it’s best to get in the forums and post questions so that others can help you out and keep you from getting overly frustrated.

1 Spice up
8

I would have to agree. I was expecting more out of 7, but hey the software is free so I can’t complain.

1 Spice up
9

BTW, I have been running SW7 in production for over two weeks, and have had 0 issues and even worked with a upgraded 6.2 database.

1 Spice up
10

SW7 is beta for a reason…

If you don’t want the issues don’t go for the beta.

Just my £0.02

2 Spice ups
11

SW7 is in production now. It is not in Beta any longer.

4 Spice ups
12

Late to the game a bit. Been in production for a few weeks. Even had some updates posted (I think 3 so far).

Beta is for testing purposes. If you can’t or won’t be willing to test and give feedback, don’t ever use beta anything.

13

I think i am in the minority with having a true issue with V7 and I have been working with Spiceworks Support since the day it went into production. It looks like things are sorted out now, but I haven not complained about the issues once. I just work with the GREAT guys in support to figure out what is going on and try things out until we get everything ironed out.

Now to the issues you stated:

1) It never seems to stop scanning

This is likely due to the NEW SCANNING ARCHITECTURE. there are now scans that are kicked off every 5 minutes or even quicker in some cases. The scans are now broken down as to what is scanned each time. So the 5 minute interval scans are just up down scans (IE ping scans). Then there are more scans that do other things. As a result it looks like Spiceworks 7 never stops scanning.

2) over two-thirds of my inventory have scan errors or are unknown devices (most of which were properly known before version 7)

It is possible this is also due to the new scanning infrastructure. Before Spiceworks would report devices as being “scanned” even if they were only partially scanned. Now Spiceworks will not call a device scanned if it is fully scanned.


3) it pegged the CPU on the VM i was runnng spiceworks on and made it unusable

This could be a bug that just started to show up at the end of the beta. If you restart your VM things will run just fine.

So to summarize, if you ask question here on the forums you can often get good answers quickly. There is no reason to stew in issues with Spiceworks because between all the other people using the software and the GREAT support people you can find answers to you issues.

8 Spice ups
14

You likely won’t have to reinstall and start from scratch, just change a couple of settings; network scan settings in particular stands out. Network discovery and device data scanning are separate tasks in the new release of Spiceworks, allowing you to better fine-tune scan settings/schedules for more efficient scans with reduced bandwidth cost and to improve overall performance of Spiceworks. I ran into a couple of the same issues you describe, which in the end were rectified by lowering the scan frequency of a few IP ranges and disabling a couple of incompatible extensions.

Try contacting support@spiceworks.com – the support team at Spiceworks are amazingly helpful and super-fast at responding to stuff like this.

1 Spice up
15

Hi Erin, sorry for the rough time since upgrading. With 7 we made some major changes to Spiceworks, including (but not limited to) the Inventory UI, and the backend of the network scanner.

With v7 you should definitely be seeing more scanning, more often. The goal is to make Spiceworks more capable of meeting your “monitoring” needs without just scanning every device all the time. So, in 7, the scanner scans much more frequently now, but should also be more precise - scanning for more “important” info often, and scanning larger numbers of devices less often.

That said, you can definitely scale back the scanning to reduce the load back to the 6.2 levels. We certainly don’t want to melt your hardware (although it sounds like that was your concern with point #3, which one of the 7 hotfixes seems to have helped with).

So maybe now you’re thinking: “Great - so 7 is different. So why is it failing to scan devices that you never had problems scanning before?” It definitely sounds like something isn’t working properly. We hoped to actually make the scanner easier to use/configure, and more capable in 7.

If you pick out a Windows device in the Inventory, can you use the “Resolve” button to “Troubleshoot” it? Enter a set of credentials you know works properly and test them out. It will help to know if the process is failing during that test, or if the test “passes” but you later notice the device wasn’t rescanned properly.

We will definitely be able to help you get this sorted out without the need to start over - upgrading from 6.2 to 7.0 is supported 100%. Just to be sure - you upgraded from 6.2 to the release version of 7.0, right? Didn’t use any of the betas?

1 Spice up
16

I’d recommend giving the new, more frequent, default schedule a try. Especially if your Spiceworks host server can handle the extra load.

If you need to scale it back, this is a great example of a reduced scan schedule - one with a scan frequency closer to what you would have had in 6.2.

scan-schedule.PNG
scan-schedule.PNG738×663 23.5 KB
3 Spice ups
17

Everyone,

First, i wanted to apologize for flaming out a bit here. Thankfully spiceworks is not a critical mission critical part of my workflow, but it is pretty darn important, so having it hang/crash/not scan was beginning to cost more time than not having anything in place.

Second, thank you all for the advice.

So first i want to respond to a few questions or suggestions. When i posted this yesterday i was running the most recent release which was version 7.0.01242.

As far as scan schedules go, currently I am just running the default schedule that comes with version 7. I looked through the settings and “on paper” they looked fine and i had no reason to argue with them.

My comment about the latest point release remedying the CPU usage appears to have been only half true. Spiceworks no longer eats itself alive and hangs the entire computer at 100% usage 100% of the time, but it is still pegging the CPU frequently. It makes the web interface slow and sluggish, but not unusable. I’m sure if i could allocate more resources to spiceworks it would help, but at the moment that is not super feasible. I was prepared to take something of a performance it with the upgrade to 7, but this is a little over the top.

Regarding scan errors, it was suggested that spiceworks 6 may not have been “fully” inventorying items previously. While i cannot dispute this with 100% certainty, it does seem unlikely. As I said some of the items that are not getting inventoried are staff workstations (that are accessible through the same domain admin account that spiceworks itself is running under) and printers set to be scanned using SNMP and the “public” community name. To compound matters, some staff workstations are scanned correctly, while many others come back with no info. And in fact many come back with multiple entries. For instance i have a number of workstations that show up in the scan errors list twice and as far as i can tell the difference is that one has its Svc Tag info set as the actual Dell Service Tag number and the other one has its tag set to the computer name.

I was able to to select one of the devices in the scan errors list and manually enter a set of credentials and it did seem to scan correctly (though it’s doppelganger was still a scan error). The thing is the credentials i entered were the same as a set that was already saved in spiceworks on the network scan settings page.

And Ben, to address your last question, yes i upgraded to the release version from 6.2, not a beta version

(p.s. Ben, i did see your PM, and i will respond to that shortly here)

1 Spice up
18

Thanks for sticking it out with us. I feel bad that the upgrade turned into a time-suck for you.

7.0.01242 is currently the latest build, but we’re still working on performance improvements for an upcoming hotfix. Hopefully that will get performance back to what you were used to.

To help clean up the inventory and get you back on track, could you delete any of the devices showing the “computer name” or “IP address” as the serial number/service tag, and run another scan on the network? You can delete devices in bulk from Inventory, using the “Edit” button near the top.

Thanks for confirming on the beta - that helps rule out other issues that might have been caused by beta. :slight_smile:

Once that scan finishes, send us a log files package and the name and IP of a few devices you’ve noticed are duplicated or are not scanning properly. Here’s how to send the logs in:

http://community.spiceworks.com/help/Contact_Support#Log

1 Spice up
19

Here’s a screenshot of how to wipe out devices in bulk - if they’re in the Unknown’s group, this is what it would look like.

If they aren’t in that group we might have to use Custom Groups to create a filter to catch them all. In Spiceworks a single device can be a member of multiple groups.

delete-unknowns.PNG

1 Spice up
20

And therein lies the problem. they are not listed in the “unknowns” group, or any group for that matter except for the “all devices” group.

If spiceworks was Schrodinger, he would acknowledge that the cat is in the box, but steadfastly refuse to open it and observe its state.