Alternatives to SMS

[Kyajae]

Any Sys Engs/Admins or Tech Support crew out there deploying a good alternative to Microsoft's SMS they can recommend (either on per user licence/shareware or freeware).

The management knobs (MKs) at my gig are only seeing the cost/user licence and not the benefits of SMS. It's a strange setup here where the MKs dictate IT policy from the top right down. So last week, we had someone delete an entire folder on a server (becaue the MKs insist on full control access) and we wasted time running recovery from backups. What we don't know for sure is who deleted it in the first place and whether it was a training issue (yeah, right) or something more malevolent.

I love this gig!!

Any recommendations gratefully received.

[angusglover]

So is the issue software deployment or permissions and auditing?

[Kyajae]

So is the issue software deployment or permissions and auditing?

Mainly auditing. The MKs insist on the most permissive access conditions despite our advising them to the contrary. SMS is too expensive for them and we're expecyed to know everything that's going on in the system without the proper tools to do the job.

[angusglover]

Not sure if it's still around but I used a cheap tool called HYENA that had more functionality with regards auditing etc. I am sure there are others but this was pretty good. It also did pretty much everything else....

I am sure others can come up with good suggestions tho.

[kirk]

I've used Centennial Discovery (http://www.centennial-software.com/) in the past; not sure of the cost but it was quite a good auditing tool allowing you to produce \ publish reports to a WWW server so MK's can access them easily

[ladymuck]

One place I worked for a long time ago used EZAudit. Very basic but did the job for the most part. Only cost a few hundred dollars.

[2uk]

GFI have something cheap.