GFI LANguard. Good or is there something better?

[Tedob1]

HT i was going to ask the same question yesterday, thinking vuln detection might not be his primary objective. i knew about languard but not enough to comment having used it only once or twice but was intregged with their aledged ability to check for patchs and apply them if missing. i download the new version and tested it with absolutly disqusting results. im running SUS server now with gigabytes of patches and service packs but yet languard is telling me that some 2k machines are in need of service pack one:

The latest service pack for this product is not installed !
Latest SP available : Service Pack 1
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...S/ie6setup.exe

i went to the machines in question and did a 'winver' they all have sp4 installed....not a real good call! each machine is also showing about sixteen other patches missing for vulns that have been fixed in past service packs. with the length of time they've been at it GFI should have taken this into consideration when they built their data base but then again its not detecting the service packs so thats a moot point.

my opinion....a waste of disk space

[incideagent]

yea gfi server monitor........ i did not have any kind of luck with it on my windows 2003 server, crashed and crashed over and over again, luckily this was a home server, the first time i ran it it ran fine and i like the features, esp the email if something goes wrong cause i can check my email from my cell phone, very nice feature, as for scanning, there is microsoft baseline <---- kind sucks, nmap is freakin awesome, and eye retina pretty kool. gfi languard is like the baseline scanner in ways of the patch checks and such, nice for many workstation enviroment and deployment of patches and such.

[MrCoffee]

Ms. Mittens: Yup, I realized that LANguard has a scanner when I started reading the replies. Your right of course, I was considering GFI Network Server Monitor and GFI LANguard Security Event Log Monitor (S.E.L.M.), and didnt state it correctly.


Ok, so I am getting the idea that LANguard isn't the "be all to end all product" my employeer thinks it is, and that it lacks a lot from an Admin point of view. But what about from the point of view of a alert/notification system for a Non-Admin? Keep in mind, the base idea is to have a way of monitoring the servers for critical issues when there is No Admin available. The guy that will get the alerts it a novice at best. My budget is non exsistant. I have to get approval no matter what way I go.

Better yet, lets start from scratch. You have a network of 6 Win2k Servers you want to monitor. You have no monitoring solution in place, and you can put in whatever you want, what do you choose?

Someone mentioned Linux, and I realized I do have a RH9 box in place, acting as a small Web/Ftp server, but it is so stable I often forget it's there. So setting up a Linux solution is not out of the question.

Whatcha think?

[e_sandrs]

You will probably get more complete answers from others, but if you're looking solely at network monitoring, you could consider tools like Big Brother (which I've used and like) or perhaps one of these others, that I know little to nothing about - but we're mentioned with Big Brother in a discussion I participated in:

*Big brother - http://bb4.com/ *Basic product is free.
*Nagios - http://www.nagios.org/ *Basic product is free.
*Servers Alive: http://www.woodstone.nu/salive/ (free for 10 servers or less)
Lan Auditor: www.lanauditor.com
Whats Up - http://www.ipswitch.com/
HP Openview - http://www.hp.com/
CA Unicenter - http://www.ca.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/mom/default.mspx
http://www.gfi.com/lannetscan/
http://www.solarwinds.net/Orion/Index.htm
http://www.snapfiles.com/shareware/n...swnetmoni.html
http://manageengine.adventnet.com/pr...ger/index.html
http://www.activexperts.com/?p=homepage

Also, I've only heard about the option of Big Sister - http://bigsister.graeff.com

I know it's alot of links, but hopefully other suggestions will help trim down where you look.

[Palemoon]

I have found the product very good on an internal network in that I usr it to deploy MS patches and mostly scan local internal boxes. Ok use it external when I see activity at the firewall that may or may not be of concern there well results are mixed. Run a mixed network the desktops which I use it for are al Win have to be because of software businesss needs, sever wise have fallen into the Linux bunch. Go figure not all system are fully Windows based, thought I sill have a few. It is a good tool internally in a mixed pool of servers if for nothing more then to install MS patches. My thoughts on the matter.

Peace