Spiceworks can scan and collect information from most devices that have a network connection (and an OS). Windows, SSH, ESX/vSphere, and SNMP are all supported within Spiceworks among many others.
Here is the process of how Spiceworks scans devices on your network:
Active Directory: If Spiceworks has access to any local Active Directory domains (we will be going over this a little later in this chapter), it logs in and collects an inventory of assets on the network. Once the device is found, Spiceworks fills in specific fields based on the information collected. Some information that is collected is as follows:
IP address
Operating system
Service pack level
Machine name
NetBIOS: Spiceworks tries to access a machine's NetBIOS to collect any additional information it can.
Scanning the IP address range: Based on the scan settings that you set up (we will get to those in just a couple pages), Spiceworks scans a specific...