1. Inventory and Troubleshooting
PRESENTED BY:
Greg Kattawar, VP Dev. & Co-Founder
Spiceworks

2. Session Overview
• Integrated Application
• Scanning
• Groups/Categories
• Inventory Views & Details
• Development Extras
• Q&A

3. Integrated Application
• Community/Web
– Widget Based Broad DashBoard
– Research, Groups, Q & A
– Sharing Information & Knowledge
• Application Core
– Inventory, Monitoring, Reporting
– Help Desk, Trouble-Shooting, Network Map
– App is Not Hosted <->Ads are Hosted
• Static vs Dynamic Data
– Inventory and Monitoring are tied!
– Show Change (Timeline) Spiceworks

4. Not hosted remotely
How it Works
Browser Access on Intranet
Notes &
Reports
Documents
Full Scans
Health Check
Scanner
SSH
WMI
SNMP Monitors
Evaluated
Browser
DB
Company
Spiceworks
PING
Intranet
Core App
Up/Down Monitor
Share
Knowledge Product
Research
Helpdesk
Groups
User Tickets
Portal
Presence
Q&A

5. Scanning Fundamentals
• Initiates a few things…
– Monitors evaluated
– DB updated
• Scanning Details
– 4 Types (full, partial, health-check, up/down)
– Schedules (1min, 15min, daily/nightly)
• Schedule during “off” hours
• Impacts on Scanning
– Probing (Netbios -> WMI->SNMP->SSH->HTTP->JetDirect)
– Naming (NetBios, DNS)
Spiceworks

6. Scanning Issues
• Unknowns & Partials
– Firewall, AV blocking…
– Authentication, WMI-errors, Naming-Conflicts
• Some Relevant Settings
Change/Improve Speed: Hi/Med/Slow, collect_anti_virus, collect_events
Slow Network/Latency: socket_timeout, snmp_timeout, timeout (ping)
Ghost Devices: sweep_ping (ping is broken/blocked)
Missing Devices: ScanSpeed = slow, sweep_ping = false
Debugging problems: verbose_scan_logging ->finder_child.log
Spiceworks

7. Groups/Categories
• Why use Groups?
– Load time of views (100-200 devices)
– Logical groupings (location, custom-attr, AD)
• 3 Basic Types
– Default – based on type. (manual, scanned, AD)
– Custom – with rules (smart)
– Custom – without rules (move, copy)
Spiceworks

8. Inventory Details
• Views
– Widget / Icon / Browse / Glide
– Environment, Group, Device
– Pivots
– Timeline
• Detailed HW/SW Information
– Tickets & Custom Attributes
• Troubleshooting
– Compare
• Networking
– Interfaces, VLAN
– Historical Data & Network Map (on the way…) Spiceworks

9. Development Extras…
• New Upgrade Policy
• Application Release Process
• Patch Releases (3 types)
• Release Input
• Alpha & Beta Participation / Testing
• Next major release 4.0 (slated for June)

10. Questions?