Product Reviews
From Chaos to Control: Tools4ever SpaceGuard
Is poor data storage management putting you through "network hell?" Perhaps a software-based storage management solution can save you.
- By Tony Northrup
- 10/01/2000
There’s not much to SpaceGuard. It was designed
to add much-needed functionality to NT 4.0 without
becoming too complex. If you’re still using NT
4.0 and plan to keep it around for a while, SpaceGuard
is worth taking a look at. But if you’re already
using Win2K, Space Guard doesn’t add much to the
standard product, except for a few storage-management
features. While the base operating system can
log an event if a quota is exceeded, SpaceGuard
goes a step further and sends an email or runs
a command. There are some other minor things the
software provides, but the feature I mentioned
a moment ago is the only one worth noting. SpaceGuard
lacks remote installation capabilities, so you
have to manually install it on every monitored
node. Reporting capabilities are limited to on-screen
viewing, as shown in the figure, and exported
delimited text. After putting SpaceGuard through
its paces, here’s my (unsolicited) advice to Tools4ever:
Add some features or lower your prices. Win2K
has made the product almost obsolete.
 |
| SpaceGuard is great for NT 4.0
but doesn’t add much to Win2K. (Click image
to see larger version.) |
About the Author
Tony Northrup, MCSE, Compaq ASE, lives in the Boston area and is currently
a systems architect at Genuity. He’s the author of Introducing Windows
2000 Server (Microsoft Press) and NT Network Plumbing (IDG Books), and
co-author of Networking Essentials Unleashed (SAMS Publishing).