Unofficial Spiceworks

Spiceworks 5.0 has just been released and includes some great new features. If you have followed our beta reviews you will probably know about all the cool new features. If you haven’t checkout the below for a quick over view of everything.

All of these great new features are designed to help you manage your network and make your day even easier.

If you already know what’s changed get stuck in now and download it here.

Purchasing

To help you manage your IT purchases better Spiceworks 5.0 has now brought in a new purchases management area. This allows you to track and manage everything you buy for clients or for your company depending on if you’re a MSP or a lone IT guy.

You can use it to track every aspect of a buy from picking the product to getting it delivered and then the man hours required to set it up. Of course like with everything in Spiceworks you can then use the powerful reporting system to give management or clients with details about what you brought for them and when.

Checkout more about the free IT purchasing system here.

People View

The people view is another great addition to Spiceworks which allows you to track your active directory users directly from within the dashboard as well as link them to devices, enable and disable accounts, checkout the user’s open tickets and edit basic account information.

You can setup departments and even photos for all your user’s to make it easier to find that person who you should know but can’t remember where they sit or what they look like. In the future we may even see this rolled out more so that you can allow human resources to view the information or pull out telephone lists from it to make things even easier for you, your team and your company.

Read more about this great new free active directory management here.

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Last week Spiceworks announced a new feature “Ask the Expert” and with it drawing to a close tomorrow I thought I would do a quick review of how well it went.

Currently the group stands with 26 topics of which 15 are unanswered. That may seem like a lot of unanswered questions but if you have a scan though the unanswered questions page it’s all because the original poster hasn’t replied. Chris (Microsoft) has managed to reply to every question with a full and detailed answer and with 146 posts and just over 240 members in the group it appears to have been a success.

Although the group was not intended for SpiceHeads to get involved in both Billdozer and Justin.Davison managed to pull a best answer and helpful post out of the group as well just showing the power of the community and how people are ready and willing to help when ever they can.

Well done Chris though for getting a total of 8 best answers and 8 helpful posts.

Spiceworks are already starting to plan the next “Ask the expert” and unofficially we are expecting it to be with CDW about a wide range of products or CA about backup software. Only time will tell.

You still have one more day to get your questions in to Chris if you have any! So ask away on the community today! Before its to late! Ask The Expert: Chris (Microsoft)

The community has just seen a new feature lunched called “Ask the Expert”, this new feature is in basic a forum for you to ask questions direct to experts in that field. The first of this new and exciting new feature in the form of getting help with all your Microsoft Licensing queries from Chris Le Texier. Chris is a Technical Consultant/SI at Microsoft Inc. he has a wide knowledge of all Microsoft Licensing and will be on hand for a whole week to help you get the right licensing for your business.

Chris Le Texier has been a member of the Spiceworks Community since 2008, and this week (9/8/10-9/16/10) he’ll answer all of your Microsoft Licensing questions right here. If you’ve ever had a licensing question that you’ve never gotten a chance to ask, this is your week!

Chris (Microsoft) has been working for Microsoft close to 5 years. As a Senior Project Manager, he supports the LAR (large account reseller) and DISTI (distributors) community for the Windows Client OS in presales and licensing. He also supports Windows Client OS, SA, MDOP & Windows VDA. Chris has his own Partnercast series on the Microsoft Partner Network, and is an MSCE, MSCA and MCP.

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In the future Spiceworks will be getting other vendors like Rackspace, CA and HP involved so that you can get questions answered by experts in those area as well.

Checkout the community group “Ask The Expert: Chris (Microsoft)” now and get your questions ready for tomorrow.

The Spiceworks 5.0 beta group has been updated, with information on the new features we are going to get.

5.0 delivers the next frontier of “everything IT” with features to help you manage your network, people & purchasing: Config Management. Newly Tuned Network Map. Microsoft Hyper-V Support. People View. Purchase & Cost Tracking. ….& more, letting you navigate your wild-frontier of a workday like the IT maverick you are!

Spiceworks 5.0 is set to be their biggest release yet with some huge new features for managing your network, the people and purchasing.

The major thing for a lot of people will be the speed, Spiceworks believe the start-up will be around 40% quicker and after that the pages will load 30% quicker. This is a major boost to help allow you to navigate it quicker and more effectively.

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Last week Spiceworks reached 1 million SpiceHeads and tomorrow is the big party.

Spiceworks has managed to get 1 million IT Pros using Spiceworks in under 4 years. With SpiceHeads in 196 countries around the globe, Spiceworks has managed to become the fastest growing and most widely used network management system.

With 1 million SpiceHeads and now SpiceRex it is now a ‘A force to be reckoned with?’

Now there are over 1,000,000 users banding together large companies like Microsoft, Dell, HP, CDW stand up and take part providing us with deals and help thought out the community. Its a great place to get advice and recommendations from other IT pro’s.

…IT feels pretty darn good to be 1 in a million, doesn’t it?

So make sure you join in the party tomorrow at 12:30pm CDT or 6:30 GMT. It will be streamed around the world, checkout the UStream Page here.

It will be a great event to watch with talks from:

• Scott Abel, CEO & Co-founder
• Greg Kattawar, VP of Dev & Co-founder
• Francis Sullivan, CTO & Co-founder
• Jay Hallberg, VP of Marketing & Co-founder
• Tabrez, Dir. of Products & 1st Spiceworks Employee
• Marcelo, Dir. of Support
• Nic, Your Spiceworks Community Manager
• (& more of your favorites!)

And even some SpiceHeads

• benhar (one of Spiceworks longest-time users!)
• akp982 (2009 Spicy Winner – The Champion)
• Scott Alan Miller (2009 Spicy Winner – The Innovator)
• DScammell (2009 Spicy Winner – The Hero)
• Spiceworks 1 Millionth User?!
• (& some other surprise SpiceHeads)

Checkout Spiceworks.com for more information!

Not using Spiceworks?

It really can help free up your time so you can spend time with your family and loved ones more without worrying about work.

Lots of people have started to think of there new year resolutions so why not make yours to use Spiceworks in the new year? Spiceworks can save you time and money and its FREE.

So the word free has grabbed your attention?

Spiceworks is 100% free and provides you with so many great features all designed to make your life easier.

• Inventory all of your Network, PCs & Macs
• Monitor & manage your network
• Manage changes
• Manage configurations
• Map your whole network quickly network
• Audit software
• Troubleshoot network problems
• Run an IT Help Desk
• Manage power consumption
• Monitor SQL Servers
• Talk to IT Pros Like You

Still unsure if Spiceworks can really help you? Have a read off a day in the life off and see just how all of those great features help you become a IT pro. Setup and use the Helpdesk to manage your time and then report on it and show how much work you do to get more pay or more time off.

Anyway, what is there to loose in trying? Spiceworks is 100% FREE and supported by a HUGE community of experts on not just Spiceworks but anything from Dell to Microsoft or even Intel. The community is there nearly 24 / 7 powered by people like you who may just have the answer to that question you have been thinking about for 3 weeks.

Already using Spiceworks?

You can save time too, with some simple plugins

• Keyboard Shortcut plugin – Navigate though Spiceworks quicker with this simple plug-in.
• Power Manager sponsored by Intel – Save not just time but money with this one, you can save money by shutting down machines in the evening but also time by not having to hunt around for ages trying to fine or make software to do this.
• Dell Search – Quickly search Dells website for machines and parts from within Spiceworks
• License Manager – This one will help you keep track of your licenses and make sure you are “legal”
• SQL Server Monitor – Monitor your SQL servers for problems before they happen.

We have heard from Spiceworks that a SQL Server monitoring plugin will be out within a week!

There were talks started back in September about on the community here but we didn’t believe it would happen.

We currently have no idea what it will look like but so fair it appears it will include information like

1. Graphs of the server performance over time, things like the transactions per second, IO reads/writes per second, number of active transactions.
2. The current metrics, so you can see close to real time what’s going on, from disk space to long running transactions.
3. Static information like database names, host name, ip, version.

Could this be something Spiceworks have partner with Microsoft with?

I’m definitely going to be trying it out here. Just hope it supports the three main versions of SQL being used not just 2008.

This plugin will be something special, alot of SQL monitoring tools are very expensive. This will definitely bring Spiceworks even closer to being “everything IT”

When we hear more well keep you up-to-date

Spiceworks not long ago started there Virtualization Buyers Club and it is growing stronger by the day, the virtualization buyers club is a lot like the backup buyers club it provides a great range off resources to help you decide what Virtualization solution is best for you.

The Spiceworks Community team have put together a huge amount of resources and sponsors together to help make your life easier and get that bit closer to being “Everything IT”. There are currently near 20 PDFs, 2 calculators, a zip and many web links to help provide YOU with all the information you need to help make a informed decision.

• Step 1 – Learn – If your just looking at getting more information on virtualization from companies like VMware, Microsoft, Sun, Citrix and even Oracle this is the place to start. There are great resources here from all the vendors as well as ones Spiceworks have made for you. Its a great place to start to look into virtualizing even if your a bit unsure about it. The buyers club will also slowly start to fill up with information about other peoples experiences with the different technologies. So jump on into the community and learn about the different types virtualization solutions available to you.

• Step 2 – Decide – So your ready to decide and using the resources in step 1 you have managed to work out virtualization is the way forward for your company? Good on you. Now comes the make or break bit, picking the solution that’s best for you. With 5 vendors and each of them having 3/4 solutions it can be a messy place to be, you could be looking at up to 20 different solutions. Checkout the Awesome Product Comparison Guide this is the first community powered or “crowd-sourced” comparison guide on the community with more planned. Martin9700 did a fantastic job kicking it off, but it doesn’t stop there more people will be adding to it over time and even you could contribute. Once you have check out the Comparison Guide Spiceworks have provided you with the contact details for all there virtualization sponsors. Pickup the phone, drop them a email, use the web forms. Fire your questions at them or just post your questions into the community.

• Step 3 – Buy – Don’t want to be flooded with LOADS of sales calls? Spiceworks broker the quote so you remain anonymous! Going to quotes can be the pain of the job, loads of calls to make then loads of people phoning you back never sure you gave them all the same information. Spiceworks are here to help, you can use their simple form to get quotes from VMware, Microsoft, Sun, Citrix and Oracle for their virtualization solutions. The form wont take more than 5 minutes to fill in.  Get your quotes now

What if I’m not looking to buy just yet?

What? Your not going to buy virtualization right now? Well that’s ok! The Spiceworks resources will stay up and around for as long as the community is there. You can pop over to the Virtualization Buyers Club any time you like to get the latest information. All the information from the Backup Buyers Club is still there waiting for people to read and use. Don’t feel pressured into buying now if you can’t. Just remember when the time comes it will be there ready waiting for you.

So what are you waiting for?

Jump on over to the Virtualization Buyers Club now!

Please note you have to be part of the Spiceworks Community to access some of the resources to sign up you will need Spiceworks, Download it here.