System management akin to DameWare and Hyena: Purgos 3.0.249

Purgos 3.0.249
http://www.softulz.net/

Have you ever used DameWare tools or SystemTools' Hyena products? They are GREAT paid system administration tools, essential for any network administrator to effectively support multiple users spanning different physical locations.

Purgos is a new tool to me (although it is at version 3!) which almost fills the freeware niche of "DameWare"-esque utilities in that you can quickly inventory a remote system, allows remote control via VNC or RDP, shows you quick device details, quick remote registry support and more.

Note that it is not nearly as clean as DameWare or Hyena, but it does approach those programs' level of usefulness when you need to get a quick connection to a remote computer.

With Purgos, you can quickly:

• Determine OS, Service pack version
• Remote control via RDP or VNC
• Browse locally installed hard disks on remote computer
• Filter computers/servers based upon various criteria
• Group computers/servers
• Run executables from remote station
  

Central inventory database

The main difference between Purgos and the aforementioned DameWare and Hyena products is that managed computers report into a central administration server via an installed agent, similar to SMS. That means you can view system details even when the computer is offline. Limited information is available on Purgos' website to determine exactly how the agent works...i.e. does it update statistics on a predetermined interval, or when the agent starts up?

The nice thing about a centralized database is that you can run a quick query showing how many managed computers you have where service pack 3 is installed, or how many computers have 512Mb of RAM.

Add computers to the Purgos console

You can add new computers to the console quickly via a couple different routes:

• Single computer name/IP
• Multiple computers via Active Directory import
• Multiple computers via NTLM domain
• Multiple computers via text file listing

A little refinement could be made...

It seems like the computer management console piece is a bit more refined than the 'server files' component. When I attempted to look at some of the properties of where the server files and folders where located, I get an error, but this is if no files have been dropped into the folder...

Also, it was not immediately clear what these folders are for, but more in-depth documentation hunting would probably help me out there.

There are a lot of cool features built into Purgos that I don't have time to review at this time (baby and all, right?), here's a couple interesting features:

Computer Management (Copy Files)	Section 2.4
An arbitrary set of files can be copied to one or more computers. The files that need to be copied to the server can be added to the servers file set at the time of copy or before. Select the files or set of files from all files on the server to copy.

Computer Management (Snapshots)

Section 2.9

Snapshots are a way of capturing the configuration of a given system at a given time. Once two or more snapshots have been taken you can then compare them to analyze the differences. Snapshots can be scheduled to run on a scheduled basis or can be taken immediately the compare with an older snapshot. Comparing snapshots consists of selecting the two points in time that you wish to compare and beginning the compare process . Once the compare process is complete you can view the specific details about the differences found.

I'd like to see the ability to run our own commands against a remote computer, much like Hyena's functionality. Also, I'd like to see remote printers that are installed...

If you get a chance to take a look at this, post your thoughts here.

Update: Spiceworks 4.0 coming in June

Spiceworks, a personal favorite freebie of mine is slated for a 4.0 release in June.



Some of the new non-heartburn inducing spiciness (as mentioned in the 4.0 forums):

• Network maps
• Bulk-editing of objects
• Removal of Glide support (not many people use it)
• IE6 support dropped for reports and admin interface (end user GUI will still be supported)
• Latest Ruby on Rails as a framework, resulting in faster operation
  
• New end-user portal layout
  

In the meantime, if you don't know what Spiceworks is or want to know more about what it does, review this slideshow/video:

Spiceworks Intro

View more presentations from ground047.

Tip: Extract raw data from your Spiceworks database using Excel

I wrote this quick article yesterday and posted in the Spiceworks forums - thought you SW users here would get some use out of it!

Rob

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This article describes how you can use Excel (or any program that uses ODBC) to extract the raw data from the Spiceworks database.

This document covers Windows, but the same concepts apply when using Linux or any other OS capable of running a SQLite3 ODBC connection.

Requirements:

• Spiceworks (any version)
• Windows OS
• Microsoft Excel or other Spreadsheet program
• File level access/permissions to the Spiceworks_prod.db file

	Download and install the SQLite ODBC driver Go to http://www.ch-werner.de/sqliteodbc/ and download and install sqliteodbc.exe (current version). Accept all default options. Linux versions of the driver can also be found on this page.
	Configure your ODBC driver a.) Open your Data Sources (ODBC) administrator from your administrative tools folder. b.) Click on the 'System DSN' tab. c.) Click on 'Add...' d.) Scroll down the available ODBC drivers listing and find 'SQLite3 ODBC Driver'. Highlight this entry and click 'Finish'. e.) At the Configuration screen, give your connection a name (in this example, we'll call it 'Spiceworks', although you can name it whatever you want). f.) Next, type the fully resolved path to the Spiceoworks_prod.db file or click the 'Browse' button to browse to the network folder where your Spiceworks database is stored. Note that you will require file-level permissions to access the database. g.) Leave all other settings as default, click 'OK' to finish up the configuration. h.) Close out of the ODBC Data Sources applet.
	Open Excel or Spreadsheet software of choice Since we are using Excel 2003 as an example, your options may/will differ depending on what spreadsheet application you use. a.) Open Excel and create a new blank spreadsheet. b.) Click on 'Data'> 'Import External Data'> 'New Database Query'. You will be presented with the 'Choose Data Source' dialog. c.) Find the 'Spiceworks' connection (or whatever name you gave your connection in step 2.), click on it, and click 'OK'. d.) You will see an error stating that "The datasource contains no visible tables", and will be presented with a Query Wizard. Click on the 'Options' button. e.) You should now see the 'Table Options' dialog. Clear all checkboxes with exception to 'Tables', then click 'OK'. You should now see all the tables listed in the left-hand column. Now you can choose which tables and columns you wish to query! If you want to use MSQuery to build your SQL, you can cancel out of the Query Wizard, and click 'Yes' when asked if "...you want to continue editing this query in Microsoft Query".