IT Inventory Tracking

What is a good tool to keep track of IT inventory? Systems that are installed and running, parts being ordered, that sort of thing. I'd love a central, web based system (preferably something we can customize) but my searching so far has resulted in a lot of dead open source projects that havn't been updated in a few years and poorly created commercial websites that don't do a very good job describing their product.

The software doesn't have to be free or open source - a good commercial alternative is fine. It doesn't even need to be a web-based tool, that's just what I thought would be simplist to find and easiest to deploy. The number of assets that it will be tracking will be in the dozens, so it doesn't have to be a super high-end enterprise solution but it does need to do a better job than an excel sheet in a shared folder (which is our current "solution")

From serverfault DrStalker

• There is a free solution: http://www.spiceworks.com/

  Maybe it suits your needs.

  Hope that helps.

  Oskar Duveborn : Isn't it supported by ads? Ie not really free as you'll have to pay to get rid of them ^^

  Bill Weiss : I changed it to be "free" instead of "open-source". "ad-supported" might be a better choice, dunno.

  Miles Erickson : I have used Spiceworks and I have to say that I find it frustrating. It has many features, but customization is limited and you never really feel like you "own" your inventory data because it is a proprietary product. The ticketing system is very slow and unresponsive, even when Spiceworks is running on a top-of-the-line Xeon server with plenty of RAM, so it tends to discourage techs from actually using it. Also, we do not like the security implications of the requirement for the Spiceworks service to run as a domain administrator. It's probably a better fit for small IT shops w/ <100 PCs.

  Tekhne : I've had a poor experience with Spiceworks. It's closed source, AFAIK, and it didn't seem to be very extensible, or very aware of the inner workings of various UNIX and Linux operating systems.
  From AlexDuggleby

• Another one that you may find useful is "IRM" at http://irm.stackworks.net/.

  Less hardware based and more "task" based is "oneorzero" at http://www.oneorzero.com/

  From Tubs

• Try Nagios, Zennos, Zabbix all open source

  From

• OCS Inventory is what you need. http://www.ocsinventory-ng.org/ I have been using it for years. provides very robust hardware and software inventory. It can even handle software deployment

  Miles Erickson : OCS Inventory is an amazingly useful tool. Sometimes we export CSV from the web interface, sometimes we run our own queries against the database... but it definitely does the job of keeping track. In a Windows environment, it is simple and effective to deploy the agent via Group Policy.
  From Ninja76

• LanSweeper free is enough for most inventory needs. Good thing is it doesn't require anything installed on clients. If you want more AD integration / scan for keys pay version is for you.

  From MadBoy

• interesting if your a windows house

  http://www.microsoft.com/online/windows-intune.mspx

  From tony roth

• I found spiceworks to be a bit heavy/bloated and buggy. Then again it was 2007/8 when i gave spiceworks a spin

  We use Kaseya for inventory management of our small network (100 desktops). It does require a desktop agent, which can be deployed via GPO

  From iainlbc

• We use Track-It for inventory management and issue tracking. It's commercial software, but it's pretty thorough. It is a Windows application, but does have a web interface for technicians to view their work orders, and for end users to enter requests. We also use it for tracking all workstations, printers, and other devices, including specific equipment such as the tower and monitor that a given workstation might have. It also has the ability to automatically detect new devices, although I haven't had the best of luck with it picking up changes correctly. It also integrates with Active Directory (if that matters to you) for the end users and technicians. There is also the ability to track purchase orders and convert them into inventory, although we haven't used these features. It might be overkill for what you're looking for, but it's pretty good software if the price isn't a problem.

  Ben : I'm not saying you're wrong by suggesting Track-It! but I will throw in my £0.02 with my experience. I inherited Track-It! from my predecessor and had nothing but trouble with it, so I ditched it. It used hideous amounts of memory on the server it was on, the audits would frequently hang (especially on anything other than XP), it would merge 2 assets it thought were the same thing (they weren't) and sometimes it showed historical information for an asset other than the one you were looking at! Very odd program.

  Paul Kroon : I definitely don't disagree with the asset discovery stuff. That's why I said I haven't had much luck with that, and I turned that off a while ago. I've just been adding new assets manually, which has worked much better for me. I couldn't really say anything about your other problems, although I know I was first exposed to Track-It in college through an older version that was even more horrible than your description. I've been much happier with the latest version, but YMMV, of course.
  From Paul Kroon

• There are many options out there, but I suggest building your own if you have programming skills. The corner cases, and there seem to be many in my experience, always seem to be specific to a given organization (e.g. it needs and interface X to connect it to this other in-house tool Y).

  From Tekhne

• Maybe Numara Inventory Manager is the right software for you

  From Marcel Janus