Spiceworks v1.5 Released
I've been using Spiceworks for a few months now and really like the product. Today, they released version 1.5, so it seemed like a good idea to discuss it.
As you can probably tell, I am a big fan of free (as in beer) software. Something about free seems to fit my budget very well. Spiceworks is a network management solution (among other things) that is freely available due to advertising that appears along the right side of the screen. If advertising bothers you, it shouldn't in this case. I barely even notice it there.
This is a great application for the small IT shop. It:
- discovers devices on your network without installing agents,
- tracks error conditions (you set the conditions),
- sends emails or SMS messages if an error condition is met,
- provides help desk trouble ticketing,
- keeps an eye on the patch level of your computers,
- reports for all of the above,
- and access to community forums to discuss Spiceworks and other IT issues with your peers.
If you've been looking for a way to keep tabs on your network assets and user requests/issues but can't afford the expensive network monitoring solutions or don't have time to roll your own solution from open source, this is definitely a product you will want to look at.
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4 comments:
How safe is this product to use on the network? With ports open does it increase your risks to uninvited guests/hackers etc.
Thanks
This is a good thing to question. I'm not worried about external hackers/crackers. I run Spiceworks on XP in a virtual machine which is within our internal network. All traffic generated by Spiceworks is on the inside of our firewall.
Spiceworks connects to clients with Windows authentication. You'll need to run it with a Domain Admin account. To connect to non-Windows clients, Spiceworks uses SSH.
So, I'm not overly concerned about network security. If someone has cracked my network wide enough to get to Spiceworks, I have much bigger problems to worry about.
i have used spiceworks for quite some time, and there really is no security issue. if you open up the port on your firewall to view externally you might have issues. i just use port redirection from the firewall to prevent direct connects.
and as far as the app goes, it uses port 80 to get its adds (down the right side), no hidden ports or hidden adgendas.
my two bits.
T.
Thanks Dave for the information regardin security issues. I was afraid of it stealing usernames and passwords. The next step would be monitor network traffic for outgoing packets to check what could it be.
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