I’m in a good situation because I know what I know and I know what I don’t know. It would be quicker to share what I know but for the moment, I know that one thing I don’t know is much about any of the hardware and software in the church. I can pretty well tell you where most of the computers in the building are and I can tell you where most of the switches and hubs are but that’s about it.
That bothers me. I don’t know what the oldest PC in the building is or the slowest or the one that has the least hard drive space. In the grand scheme of things, does that matter? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it does. The point to my ministry is to equip people to effectively use technology and how can I do this if I don’t know what technology they are trying to use?
In the past, I have tried to use something called Aida and the best I could do was to run it on every machine and end up with about a 25 page text report per machine giving detail of everything down to the machine code. Kinda fun the first time you see it but it brings exactly no value.
This past Tuesday night, I admitted to my tech team that I had really been holding us back, but it was intentional. I have been waiting to detail a plan of attack and share it with the staff and now that that is done, we are free to run.
In the high level review I gave the other day, I mentioned that we installed Spiceworks and it was pretty cool. This afternoon, I get a call from my buddy Kirk Longhofer and he is almost more excited about Spiceworks than I am. He had been looking for a utility like this for a long time and I know first hand that he has a lot more to keep track of than I do. As of this afternoon, Kirk had spent more time on Spiceworks than I had and he explained some things to me about what the software can do. Since I let Daniel set it up and play with it initially, I had just barely looked at it and definitely hadn’t played around with it.
The screen shot above shows a high level overview of what is on the network, then by clicking on a category, you drill down to the detail. You can slice and dice your data pretty much any way you want to. There are also reports that I’m sure you can print off, which I will probably do once we get a good inventory. You can also look at the software installed in different ways, by what computer it’s on, view what software is on each computer, what is licensed and what isn’t, what OS’s are out there and so much more. It also shows what PC’s have virus protection and which ones do not. Out of the handful of computers that I have showing on their so far, most are not virus protected! (which is unacceptable because we have a TrendMicro Enterprise license!) Time to get busy.
But that’s exactly what I’m talking about, I need to know these kind of things and fix them and Spiceworks allows me to do this. Something else I have learned tonight is that there is a built in helpdesk application and it can be configured to allow users to log a help ticket. Man, I am digging this. (did I just say that?)
Spiceworks runs all the time, in the background and scans the network at predetermined intervals. I have set mine to run every 12 hours at 11:00. I figure that’s one of the most populated times of the day, but I’ll have to see.
If you have any size network at your church, install Spiceworks, it is a necessity and it’s free. Kirk tells me you can pay about $10 a month and they will remove the ads, which is probably worth it. I haven’t seen anything about that first hand but I know it’s there somewhere, Kirk doesn’t usually make stuff up.
One other tip on managing your network, check out LogMeIn, It offers a way to VPN into any computer on your network, even when you are outside the network and it is also free. Do you see a trend here? I like free. LogMeIn is great, I am able to manage as many computers at church that I want to from where ever I am and also manage any computer at home from where ever I am. There are upgraded versions that allow more features but I can manage users in ActiveDirectory and now I can also monitor Spiceworks.
So, don’t miss this valuable software. If you tell them you heard about this from me, they will say “who??” so don’t do that.
Thanks for the call, Kirk! It was great catching up! See you at MinistryTECH, for sure.
Technorati tags: churchtech, spiceworks, logmein, reachingcarthage
Great, great tool. I’m about 24 hours in and I really feel a sense of comfort about the status of things on our network that I haven’t had since I took over IT responsibility 2 years ago.
I’ve been “planning” a sweep across every machine on our network (40 or so) to get a good feel for what is where… but who has time. Spiceworks does it for me!
I’m having some problems with “unknowns”… but for with one exception, I’ve been able to work through them using the help files online.
Thanks for the new tool Jim!
I use Spiceworks to profile my network and the devices too. Works well. Unfortunately I still have to use one-off tools for network troubleshooting and that takes too much time when the network is shaky. I came across pt360 from Packettrap Networks. It too is free and has a useful suite of tools for device diagnostics. They worked well and were very fast…and most importantly, all integrated together. Clean interface like Spiceworks. pt360 also has a dashboard feature with gadgets for CPU, memory, disk, interface, utilization that provides me with real-time monitoring of critical devices. http://www.packettrap.com if interested.
I wonder if Spiceworks will provide tools, and Packettrap claims to be adding discovery and alerts soon. Lets see.
PacketTrap now has network discovery. Just used it. Really cool. click HELP | CHECK FOR UPDATES and you’ll get the update automatically. Then click on “Networks” and you can do a full discovery with searchable inventory, run reports etc. Version 2.x