Spiceworks Network Monitor

Antonio1984 · 2017-03-23T10:27:39.000Z

I work for a restaurant company and we rely heavily on printers, mainly ticket printers.

I have the Network Monitor installed on my computer, and it is currently monitoring about 15 devices (servers and printers). However, I would like to monitor printers at all the sites (currently it is only one). We are talking about 60-70 printers in total.

The Network Monitor has proved very useful so far, as I get alert emails as soon as one of these printers goes offline, but I understand that it may struggle with 70 devices.

What would you suggest? I also have the Spiceworks Inventory installed on another computer, but that doesn’t seem to be as responsive as the Network Monitor in terms of alerts and device monitoring.

Is it possible (and useful) to have 2/3 different instances of the Network Monitor across different computers?

big-green-man · 2017-03-23T10:36:25.000Z

What are the specs of the computer that it’s running on? You say it’s your computer. Note that Network Monitor should be on its own computer or it won’t be accurate or run very well.

If you get a decent 6th or 7th gen i5 or i7, 8-16GB RAM, and SSD storage, this should be no problem.

dbeato · 2017-03-23T10:50:16.000Z

As Andrew noted the desktop or VM response will depend of the resources you dedicate it. I would connect the other networks with VPNs and monitor them with one instance but for redundancy I would spread out the install on multiple locations.

Spiceworks Inventory will help with alerts on ink supply and extended offline alerts.

Antonio1984 · 2017-03-23T10:52:03.000Z

Big Green Man:

What are the specs of the computer that it’s running on? You say it’s your computer. Note that Network Monitor should be on its own computer or it won’t be accurate or run very well.

If you get a decent 6th or 7th gen i5 or i7, 8-16GB RAM, and SSD storage, this should be no problem.

It’s an old(ish) dual-core computer, 8GB RAM and SSD, but I am using it as a ‘trial’, will transfer the software somewhere else as soon as I am happy with it.

So you reckon it’s all dependant on the hardware? No issues in pinging all 70 devices at the same time?

big-green-man · 2017-03-23T10:57:53.000Z

Antonio1984:

Big Green Man:

What are the specs of the computer that it’s running on? You say it’s your computer. Note that Network Monitor should be on its own computer or it won’t be accurate or run very well.

If you get a decent 6th or 7th gen i5 or i7, 8-16GB RAM, and SSD storage, this should be no problem.

It’s an old(ish) dual-core computer, 8GB RAM and SSD, but I am using it as a ‘trial’, will transfer the software somewhere else as soon as I am happy with it.

So you reckon it’s all dependant on the hardware? No issues in pinging all 70 devices at the same time?

Yep. I’m monitoring 45 devices on an Optiplex 3040 Micro with an i5-6500T, 16GB RAM, and a 128GB SSD. No issues there.

big-green-man · 2017-03-23T11:04:15.000Z

Oh, and I just checked performance. Network Monitor is burning up about 65% of the CPU, but only about 1 GB of RAM. So you might want to invest in an i7 for that many devices.