Unofficial Spiceworks

Unofficial Spiceworks managed to corner Kris (Spiceworks) for long enough to ask him some questions about the Spiceworks network and himself:

What state was the network in when you first started?

Ha! A single flat network defined by an unmanaged managed (meaning they were not actually managing it) Layer 2 switch with a Linksys router attached to it. They had tried to get an Asterisk-based PBX system to work, but were having a lot of problems.

What’s the infrastructure like now?

I have a hierarchical network with a core/distribution layer and an access layer. I have a mix of Cisco, Dell, and HP ProCurve switches providing access, and a Cisco core. The edge network is made up of a Cisco ASA 5505 firewall and a Celestix MSA VPN appliance. Wireless is provided by Cisco 1130AG access points. We are running multiple LAN segments, divided by function. Telephony is provided by an NEC IPKII PBX/Voicemail system, which is a hybrid VoIP/TDM system. We use Active Directory for central user and object management and I connect as many of our devices as possible (Windows, Mac, and Linux) into AD.

How do you cope with having to have lots of versions of Microsoft, Linux and Mac products for developers to test the Spiceworks Scanner with?

It can be complex. Many of our users prefer to use Mac, so we have integrated them pretty well. We have MSDN developer licenses, so we have access to MSDN versions of Microsoft products. Most of our test servers and workstations are run in a virtual environment hosted by VMWare ESXi. As far as Linux/UNIX goes, I am a real Linux geek, so I enjoy being able to play with different versions. We have Fedora, CentOS, Ubuntu, OpenSolaris, and even a FreeBSD (I think) in our environment.

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Matt Hartley has recently posted about his First Impressions with Spiceworks

Today I had a chance to do something that has frankly been on my to-do list for sometime now — check into Spiceworks. Designed to run on Windows PCs, I opted to install it on my own VirtualBox installation just to toss a wrench into the mix to see how well the software reacted.

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http://it.tmcnet.com has posted about Spiceworks 4.0

Jun 18, 2009 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) — Spiceworks, which provides what it called the first free social IT management application for small and medium businesses, announced the release of the Spiceworks IT Desktop version 4.0.

Spiceworks stated that the new version has several enhancements that make it easier for small and midsize businesses to manage “Everything IT.” They include the ability to visually map a company’s IT network and the addition of 3rd party management plug-ins from Microsoft, LiveOffice, Intel and Trend Micro. In addition, Spiceworks now integrates with Twitter and allows users to turn Windows events into social media alerts for collaborative problem-solving and to share real-time SMB IT trends with the world’s largest network of IT professionals.

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There on the groups page

http://community.spiceworks.com/group

• Best Practices and General IT (9)
• Communications (10)
• Databases (7)
• Hardware (19)
• IT Career (2)
• Industry (22)
• Linux/Unix (4)
• Mobile Computing (2)
• Networking (21)
• Programming (6)
• Regional (154)
• Security (8)
• Software (22)
• SpiceCorps (7)
• Spiceworks (17)
• Water Cooler (5)
• Windows (6)

Hopefully well see more soon and more things we can do with them

Tabrez has just posted:

We’re planning on pushing out an update to the Spiceworks Community tonight (Jul 14) at 7pm CST. The Community will be offline during this time. We should be back up in 4 hours. For those of you with S.C.A.D – rest assured we’ll be back and spicier!

Some of the changes you’ll see are:

• A few changes to the point system (I’ll post back tomorrow with the details but in a nutshell: you can now earn points for providing troubleshooting advice and comments on Windows Events)
• We’re testing out a new way of organizing groups around a concept called Channels. For eg: If you visit the Networking channel you’ll see all the topics from groups like Cisco, DNS, etc.
• Topics will now have social media buttons so you can share something from the community on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Linked In, and Reddit. When you share something you found interesting on Spiceworks you’re also helping spread the word about Spiceworks!

I’ll post more details once we get the release out.

Its going to be a hard time of everyone with SCAD but well fight though it.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CDT

Join Spiceworks for a 60-minute webinar where we will discuss all of the exciting new features that you’ll find in 4.0 including:

• The New Interface Network Map (Beta)
• The New User Portal
• Tickets Anywhere
• New Help Desk Features
• Windows Event ID Collaboration
• New Plugins & Dashboard Widgets
• And More!

Sign up now: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/810117322

Spiceworks mentioned by TechTarget in one of there latest articles….

At the U.K.-based marketing firm HPS Group, IT administrator Andy Phelps turned to the free, ad-supported Spiceworks toolset to track down what had slowed his company’s WAN bandwidth to a crawl.

The culprit: Windows Service Pack 3, which all 15 remote users who were logged into the corporate VPN began downloading simultaneously.

“It’s one of those situations where none of the users knows they are downloading anything, so Spiceworks pointed out that all these machines were installing this software,” Phelps said.

I recognize that name from somewhere… Andy Phelps… OHHH ITS ME akp982 lol

“You walked around the office and saw all the users on Facebook and whatnot,” Phelps said. “But we didn’t see an effect on bandwidth.”

Thank you TechTarget for taking the time to write such a great article

Read the rest of the post here

Wellston is a good blog writer who loves Spiceworks

For anybody who reads my blog that is an IT Professional, I highly recommend that you take a look at Spiceworks (http:/www.spiceworks.com).

In one of his recent post he talks about how Spiceworks helps him, even if his english is work then minde

As a member of a small IT Shop (4 full timers) for a college campus of roughly 1100 people during a semester,  keeping an accurate inventory of our (college-owned) PCs/Macs/Linux machines  and networking switches can be rather difficult.

The Spiceworks product will help you to accurately inventory the network by scanning any ip ranges that you specify and connecting via WMI (for windows),SSH (Linux/Mac), and SNMP (Network switches –also SSH/Telnet) to gather useful information (software installed, system specs, etc).   Once it discoveres your sytem, it will monitor the Windows Event Log and keep you up-to-date on the event log entries on your network.

Read more: http://wellston.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/spiceworks-deffinitely-spicey/#comment-4