Review: Spiceworks IT Desktop 3.5

Version 3.5 of the free Spiceworks IT Desktop network management package, launched last week, adds several new features and now targets larger firms, although not yet large corporate enterprises.

Spiceworks saw the light of day in October 2006, and the first release was good for around 250 devices. Since then the software's network discovery has improved to the point where up to 500 devices can be scanned efficiently and, although it can work over the 500 limit, Spiceworks admitted that it will "not be as fast".

Spiceworks IT Desktop can perform network inventory and run a basic helpdesk, as well as provide functions enabling IT administrators to monitor, troubleshoot and report on their networks.

The browser-based package also puts users a step away from an IT administrator community, which could cut the time spent troubleshooting an irritating issue by supplying the answer much more quickly than support calls to other better known network management package vendors.

As with the previous version, Spiceworks can only run on Windows operating systems, with support for XP, Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. Although it will discover Linux, Mac and Unix systems, it will not run on them.

We downloaded the 17MB file and installed the package on a system running Windows XP with an Intel dual-core 3.2GHz processor and 2Gb of memory. We did try Spiceworks on a Server 2003 Enterprise Edition install, but that meant having to decrease browser security properties.

The first thing to do on start-up is to register your email address to log in to the package, which gives you the initial 'dashboard' screen showing all the IT management functions available, and the default setup as a variety of widgets showing things like Spiceworks news, current Microsoft security patches and others.

The next thing is to run an initial scan to pick up all the devices connected to the network. It picked up our router, switch, workstations, servers, wireless access point, printer and NAS backup device.

We could then customise Spiceworks to alert us when specific conditions arose, such as supplies running low on a printer, or a desktop's anti-virus signatures not being up to date, although only a subset of anti-virus packages are supported, namely those that support Windows Security Center. Alert notification involves setting up an email server, but as yet there are no facilities for SMS.

Version 3.5 contains a number of significant new features, one of the most useful being a 'timeline' widget that lists all the events occurring on your network, the last event uppermost. This could give several clues as to why particular failures on your network have occurred.

Spiceworks also now integrates with the enterprise-class open source Nagios monitoring system, and can pick up alerts from that package.

Another feature is the ability to create new dashboard pages, which we used to separate network devices such as switches and routers from the management of desktop and server hardware systems. It was also easy to set up separate pages for printers and wireless devices.

There's also a new network bandwidth analyser for checking traffic for simple network management protocol-enabled devices over a configurable timeline, and the facility to create custom SQL reports through a built-in SQL editor, which can insert graphical displays exportable to dashboard pages.

An extraordinary number of features are built in to this package, and we would recommend at least giving it a run on a test subnet as a check against the feature list of your current system.

Perhaps a downside for some IT administrators is that the software is supported by 'targeted' technology adverts occupying screen space alongside the Spiceworks graphical user interface (GUI).

It seems that in this new version the adverts are occupying more space than when we last reviewed the package. The ads used to occupy around a quarter of the screen on the right-hand side of the GUI, but this time we saw an advert on the bottom left-hand side of the screen as well.

As to how intrusive the ads are, most people probably tune out this 'noise' anyway, or like to think they do. It's not like the TV where adverts occupy 100 per cent of the screen space.

Firms wishing to use the extra screen estate without the adverts can pay a $220 per year subscription.