I was comparing IPSwitch WhatsUp Gold with SolarWinds ipMonitor and found this little widget on the SolarWinds site.  The great thing is that it uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to monitor Exchange Server 2000 and 2003, although not Exchange Server 2008.  In real time you can see the status of the Exchange server services, mail queue sizes, and host server health indicators.

It sits in the taskbar with a green dot showing everything is normal, and changes accordingly to yellow and red as the real time status changes.

This is a great tool, but you’re kind of stuck if you have more than one Exchange server to monitor.  Still it’s worth a mention and could prove very useful to the SME sector where costs of management software is quite prohibitive.

SolarWinds provide other free tools, but again these are clearly openers to get users to become familiar with the interface and step up to the priced product offerings.

I have to say I’m impressed with the way the information is displayed, but ultimately am a WhatsUp Gold fan.  After experimenting with Spiceworks, and using HP Systems Insight Manager from the Compaq days, I have to say that I believe WhatsUp Gold to be a superb tool.

I’ll be covering WhatsUp Gold in more detail in a forthcoming post.

I’ve been experimenting with Spiceworks recently, as an addition or potential replacement for HP Systems Insight Manager.  For a free product it’s awesome.  It scans the network for devices and you can allocate them to Workstations, Servers, Printes etc.   The great thing that sits alongside the product is the community.  There are over 400,000 IT professionals worldwide using Spiceworks, and their experiences with harware, software, and vendors is there for the taking.

As with all communities, you only get out as much as you put in.  So I’m trying to answer questions and give relevant feedback on the products that I’ve used.  You also have the ability to ‘follow’ professionals and be notified when they comment, which also means you can be ‘followed’ too.

If you have a need to monitor equipment on a network, then Spiceworks is definitely worth a look.