server disk capacity monitoring + trending software recommendations

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been tasked with getting a report together on the current disk usage of our server estate, monitoring for 6 weeks - 3 months and then providing some (ongoing) trending figures for a VMWare migration and Exchange upgrade.

We have ~150 servers that I need the info from, and management have suggested I log on to each one 'frequently' and take readings of disk space, use Excel to log this then provide a report that way.

Surely there is software out there that can do this more accurately and with a lot less manual process of which my time is already over booked.

any help gratefully appreciated, all suggestions will be reviewed and cost isn't really a concern. thanks in advance!
 
thanks, i have tried Cacti quite a while ago, but whether through coincidence or worse, shortly after the servers I was testing for monitoring started to blue screen.

i will reinvestigate it though as a potential option.
 
quick update - i just found out we have a product called 'solar winds' that may be able to do this, just taking a look at their website now. if anyone knows if this product can do it, please let me know.
 
Is the solarwinds stuff free? I've used cacti for a while without issue against windows servers.

Cacti is also free, so your more likely to get it.

Are all your servers upto-date with patches etc? just incase in previous attempts you found a floor in snmp.
 
Solarwinds is not free.

We use it and it's a superb, industry standard, tool. Orion Network Performance Monitor is the one you want.

It works on querying SNMP strings. It's also a SysLog server. You can create complex alerts as well.

Highly recommended if you can afford it.




M.
 
Solarwinds do two products which you could potentialy use. Orion has already been mentioned, IPMonitor is it's cheaper cousin and has built in reports for disk usage (also uses snmp or wmi) and comes in cheaper.
 
Agree with the recomendations for Solarwinds, fantastic product. Used it to replace HP Openview for 10,000 nodes. If you're a corporate you should be able to blag a trial for 6-8 weeks as well.
 
Try downloading Microsofts scriptomatic. This will generate VB to generate the above. With a bit of butchery you can get it to export to an Excel doc. I have mine querying a bunch of servers and it emails me an HTML report every day.

We also have IBM Tivoli monitoring but thats £££ so doubt too useful for a short period.
 
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