We primarily use it to monitor the Windows machine. I don't want to call it network monitoring because it monitors the end points really, and we use other monitoring tools as well. Right now we've started using the help desk, but we haven't done that 100%.
I can see what computers are on. Not only that, I can see the VM they're on. So I've got information about the Mac, I've got information about the Windows VM, and I got the fact that they're tied together and the Windows VM is inside the Mac.
Then when I look at the Mac, I can tell you what generation it is, what the Mac address is, what the IP address is. I also see, because it's a manual process, this is the wall jack that it's tied into, this is the wireless network it's on. But more importantly, we can look at all the software that we have across everything and run a report. If there's an issue, Lansweeper will generate a report you can use, take the SQL code, dump it in there to create the report and run it. If there's an issue, it'll show us the machines that have problems, and we're able to patch from there.
We've found the most value right now in the inventory of the equipment. Microsoft had a problem recently with the Print Spooler, and we had to make sure that we were on a certain level of the patches. Lansweeper basically takes an inventory of the Windows equipment and we're able to run a report against that inventory and say, "Oh look, these machines either have the Print Spooler that it's on, or aren't patched enough to make sure that we're past that particular issue." It will also tell us, "Hey, the antivirus has been turned off."
The solution recently evolved to where you can put an agent on a machine and not be connected to your network. It will report to the cloud, and our server grabs the information off the cloud and pulls it in. We can then run reports off of the information.
We're trying to use it for the help desk, but that's not exactly its strong suit.
We've been using Lansweeper since at least 2015, 2014; enough that we've gone through a few iterations.
Lansweeper has been fairly stable.
We've built on it over the years, how much we're using it. No real complaints.
I've been very happy with the tech support. I rarely have to send them an email, but they've been responsive.
When SolarWinds had an issue, it's like, "Oh, I'm not going to touch it with a 10 foot pole."
There's probably cheaper solutions out there, but it's not as expensive as SolarWinds.
It actually costs us some money in the long run because they changed the licensing model.
They've also got the ability to copy information and run it when you're out in the cloud. I want that. We don't do that. I don't want all my information in the cloud, so we don't do that part.
I'll rate the solution an eight. I like it. We've had a few issues, but as far as the support, it's been pretty good there.
