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Network Inventory/Information Software Suggestions

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 3:50 am
by Welch
I've been looking for a decent piece of LOCAL software that can be used to keep track of information for different networks. Currently the information is being kept in Excel spreadsheets, which just isn't cutting it. I'm hoping to find something that will allow me to manually enter (automated optional) information about networks, of which I can keep different clients in their own section of the program.

I've started to play with Spiceworks but felt let down as it seems to be designed for a single network, and even beyond that it highly promotes putting the agent at least on 1 system inside the network to automatically gather information from the network. To add to that its ridden with all sorts of other features that seem to drown the simpler features that I'm after.

I just need to have a list of machines, their networking info, passwords for all of them or user account in an AD setting, software inventory for those machines, perhaps keep track of warranty timing/info, things like that.

Anyone known of simple software that is capable of doing this without going overboard? I've got no issue paying for the software if it means it will do the job properly.

Re: Network Inventory/Information Software Suggestions

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 5:24 am
by Norphy
Lansweeper is a bloody good piece of software, I use it at work a lot. It's simple, thorough and can be used on multiple networks if you get the right license.

http://www.lansweeper.com

Re: Network Inventory/Information Software Suggestions

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 7:35 am
by Scrotos
Something like this? http://www.open-audit.org/

I've been wanting to try and deploy it but it's more complex than I'd hoped.

Actually, I dunno that there's something automated for what you want without installing local agents and/or opening up file/print sharing and other stuff (WMI?) that lets these products snoop on a network. It really does seem like you want either to keep with spreadsheets or whip up a simple Access db and frontend.

I think most inventory products will give you more than what you want and require agents and whatnot and still won't give you the "network tracking" bit you also want.

Re: Network Inventory/Information Software Suggestions

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 12:28 pm
by papperlapapp
You might checkout JDisc Discovery, a network inventory and documentation software, that scans Windows, Linux, but also HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, and many virtualization technologies.

Re: Network Inventory/Information Software Suggestions

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 1:12 pm
by lonleyppl
I figured < 3 weeks wasn't too much of a necro...

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager will do all of this, especially if everything is already in an AD domain. Just run network discovery and it will pull in everything, should have the MAC and IP addresses registered (I can double check this when I go to work this afternoon), and definitely does software inventory and deployment. I haven't gotten very deep into it as it took me a while to setup, but that's my own fault as I'd never worked with Windows Server and I had to set up the AD domain, DNS, DHCP, SQL and a whole host of other things.