Network auditing tools

[VanEck]

i enjoy using the Dameware client for this type of info gathering. the interface is very similiar to the ms active directory console / sms console. it will allow you to view your entire network, and even administrate remotely... granted that you have sufficient rights on the network of course. you can view ip info, and specific system info, similiar to belarc like you were requesting, and much more.

give it a look here: http://www.dameware.com/

[dcongram]

Belarc Advisor has worked well for us.

http://www.belarc.com/

[nihil]

dcongram

I agree that Belarc is a useful tool. It is particularly strong on the software side, so you can check versions. Also it will tell you which MS patches have been applied and whether they WORKED

Everest is much better for hardware analysis.

I haven't seen a tool yet that combines the two at the same level of detail.

Another quite nice tool is SiSoftware's "Sandra"

http://www.sisoftware.net/sandra/

[CuseMMA]

The organization I work for uses a number of tools that fit this bill. The first one I can think of off-hand is Hyena Helpdesk ( http://www.amtsoftware.com/Hyena/ ). From the site:

Hyena is the tool to use instead of the built-in Windows administration tools to manage a medium to large Windows NT or Windows 2000 / 2003 network, which can be a quite challenge. Add multiple domains, hundreds or thousands of servers, workstations, and users, and before you know it, things can get out of hand.

Hyena is designed to both simplify and centralize nearly all of the day-to-day management tasks, while providing new capabilities for system administration.

This functionality is provided in a single, centralized, easy to use product. Used today by more than 300.000 system administrators worldwide, Hyena is the one tool that every administrator cannot afford to be without.

Exporter Pro is included with Hyena and is a standalone component of Hyena that supports creating delimited text output files of computers, users, groups, printers, shares, services, disk space, scheduled tasks, network configuration, registry, and Active Directory information. The registry and Active Directory export options utilize user-definable templates for an unlimited number of possible output configurations.

We also take advantage of Track-It! which is a nice help desk app that allows you to open work orders, track them and organize them. You can download a fully working demo of the program here:

http://www.itsolutions.intuit.com/landing.asp


Note: my organization is a Microsoft environment so I'm not sure how these programs deal with non-Windows systems. Personally I've been using this system for the past few months (I'm kinda new here) and I've loved it. Track-It! also allows you to audit workstations for hardware and software and from experience I can tell you that its a nice feature to have on-hand and surprisingly thorough.

This is a little off-topic but I use it almost daily and find it extremely useful for network administration and general user troubleshooting. We use Zenbrowser Remote Control along with ZENworks to remote into users PCs for troubleshooting purposes. This tool also allows you to audit a workstation to see what's in it and what's installed.