Information Systems:Network Monitoring

Zabbix has prevailed as the NMS solution and has already been implemented.

Software considerations

• Paessler
• Wireshark/TAP interface
• Spiceworks

Spiceworks is installed on the WDS virtual machine running as a Windows service. The application is a swiss army knife for IT stuff. It can inventory a network and see and discover servers, desktops, laptops, printers etc. It can also do some rudimentary monitoring and alerting and can even keep track of vendor renewals and purchases. Spiceworks is a good and useful application, but because it does so much, it doesn't really do anything really well. If WMI is all gunked up on a workstation or server, it won't display any useful information. If a printer or copier has wacky SNMP, it will also not display anything important. The good stuff in the inventory is that (as long as the IT person remembers) SW can record the date of purchase, the dollar amount and the asset number of something. This is a great way to figure out how old tech assets are, because SW can output a depreciation report. Ultimately it depends on how accurate the data is input. For example, if a new network switch is purchased, part of the mental setup process is to allow SW to do an inventory scan so it can discover the new hardware. SW will fill in items such as serial number and MAC address because that's either in SNMP or WMI, it is up to the person who is setting up the new hardware to fill in the purchase date, dollar amount and asset number. Keeping accurate records pays off when the asset reaches its end of life and has to be recycled. Knowing the asset number linked to the serial number makes everybody's work easier.

SW does a mostly ok job at keeping track of things like server warranties and contract and support renewals. It tries to figure out what vendor a server is from (Lenovo, HPE, Dell e.g.) and tries to do a serial number lookup on the vendors warranty page and if SW gets a valid answer it will show the expiry date of any applicable warranties. Contracts and support renewals do have to be entered and UPDATED manually but again, if the input is accurate, so will the output. SW has great potential to really be a fantastic application but as of 2019, it is ad-driven and the company doing development is focusing on a cloud version instead of the on premise version. If anyone in the IT dept at UWD gets hit by a bus, Spiceworks will help their replacement get a good picture of the environment.

• http://wds.unipharm.local:81/pro_users/login
• darrenf@unipharm.com
• visionit