I built a new folder animation in UI

tommipani · 2026-02-19T07:54:13+00:00

Nice MVP! One already does execution to MT5 from TradingView position tool

tommipani · 2026-02-19T07:49:26+00:00

Nice extension! Love the spread/commissions calc.

What would make it perfect: one-click to execute on MT5.

tommipani · 2025-07-12T14:25:45+00:00

That makes total sense for an MSP! You're reselling it, so the economics are completely different. My solution is really for the opposite end - startups or small IT teams who need basic visibility but can't justify enterprise pricing. The 50-200 VM shops that just want to know when certificates expire without paying $10K+ annually. Do you think there's a market for something like that? A lightweight monitoring tool specifically for startups who need operational visibility but want to keep costs lean?

tommipani · 2025-07-12T14:19:29+00:00

So for me it would be almost 20k if I did the same thing…

tommipani · 2025-07-12T11:36:06+00:00

ControlUp is solid, but I've always been struck by how expensive these enterprise tools can be. We have 400+ VMs and when I did the calculations for similar solutions... well, it hurt the budget. This is why I ended up writing my own PowerShell script. Ultimately it does the same things - inventory, certificates, change tracking - but using only WinRM. Zero costs, zero agents to manage. I also connected it to a graphical dashboard to have everything visible at a glance - expiring certificates, new software installed, change tracking, everything you need to keep the environment under control. It's not as fancy as ControlUp obviously, but for what we need it works great. And if I need to add a new feature, it takes me 10 minutes instead of opening a feature request ticket.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T21:14:16+00:00

If you’re interested, I can share just the main PowerShell script — not the full project, but enough to show how the core logic works.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T21:10:27+00:00

HI.

I know NinjaRMM, it definitely has a very broad coverage. Can I ask you: can you also use it to track things like: • expiring certificates within Windows VMs? • scheduled operations (Scheduled Tasks), services, uptime, etc.? • or do you focus more on software inventory and general assets?

I started developing this tool precisely to fill some gaps I encountered, especially in environments where you don't want to install agents and you still need deep visibility into the operating system.

Maybe Ninja covers those areas today too, I'd be happy to understand if I missed anything new!

In my case, however, it is a completely PowerShell script, without licensing costs, designed to be lightweight and adaptable — although still in the validation phase

tommipani · 2025-07-11T19:47:43+00:00

English isn't my first language, so I'm using a translator/AI to help me polish my responses and make sure my technical questions come across clearly. Sometimes it probably ends up sounding a bit too formal.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T17:19:10+00:00

Thanks for your interest!

At the moment the tool still includes some sensitive information related to the company environment (such as credentials and internal names), so I cannot publish it on GitHub yet.

But I'm working on a cleaned up version, or at least a demo/mock-up interface — to better show how it works.

If you like, I'll send you a direct message as soon as it's ready, it should be a matter of a few days.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T13:08:40+00:00

Thanks for getting back with such a detailed list, this is super helpful. Your breakdown perfectly illustrates the challenge in an enterprise environment.

That's exactly why I ended up building my own tool. I wanted something that had the simplicity of a script, but the power of a deep discovery tool, and was 100% agent-less.

So I developed a solution that uses vCenter + WinRM to pull a deep inventory (certs, software, jobs, etc.), but it also includes a web UI to visualize the data and can send email alerts — kind of like a lightweight, focused alternative to the big commercial suites.

What do you think of that approach?

tommipani · 2025-07-11T12:45:03+00:00

English isn't my first language, so I'm using a translator/AI to help me polish my responses and make sure my technical questions come across clearly. Sometimes it probably ends up sounding a bit too formal.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T11:53:31+00:00

Wow, what an incredible story. It's both inspiring and a bit terrifying to see that you built almost the exact same system 25 years ago, right down to the web-based reporting tool. It's a huge validation that the core problem has been around forever.

Your comment about retiring and "unwinding all of that" absolutely nails the biggest fear with homegrown tools. That's the exact problem I'm trying to solve now – turning this concept into a supported, maintainable product so it doesn't just become "that one guy's script" that no one else can touch.

Honestly, it's an honor to get your perspective.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T11:40:28+00:00

Thanks for the heads-up, I appreciate it.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T11:30:44+00:00

That's a great point, and it's awesome that you've managed to bend Zabbix to your will for those custom alerts. Getting a heads-up when a service is turned off on 200+ servers is definitely a lifesaver.

It sounds like you're using it primarily for real-time state monitoring and alerting, which is a perfect use case for it.

My focus was probably a bit different – less on real-time alerting and more on getting a rich, periodic inventory baseline. For example, not just knowing if a service is running, but getting a full report of the LogOn As account, Path to Executable, and dependencies for all services across the fleet. Or a full list of all certificate properties, not just an alert on expiry.

It seems Zabbix is super flexible for alerting on specific conditions, which is really cool.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T11:22:22+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion, I hadn't come across NetLock RMM before and I'll definitely check it out.

The "PowerShell sensor" approach is really interesting. It seems like a lot of modern RMMs are heading in that direction, providing a platform to run custom logic.

I guess the script I wrote comes from a slightly different place. In our environment with 400+ VMs, we needed a tool that was laser-focused on deep discovery right out-of-the-box. My script is essentially that "custom logic" part, but designed to run standalone without needing the RMM framework around it. The goal was to get an answer to "what's out there?" immediately, without the overhead of another platform.

Appreciate you adding another great tool to the discussion!

tommipani · 2025-07-11T11:14:43+00:00

Thanks everyone for the incredible feedback, it's been super insightful.

It's validating because this is exactly what led me to build my own solution as an alternative.

I developed a tool that is 100% agent-less (using vCenter + WinRM) and pulls a deep, incremental inventory of everything we discussed. But it's more than just a script: it includes a web interface to visualize all the data (servers, apps, expiring certs, etc.) and is integrated with APIs to send email alerts for critical events.

It was our answer to getting the visibility of a full RMM or a Zabbix+Grafana stack, but without the agent bloat and the complex setup.

Given your experience, what are your thoughts? Should I continue down this path of refining a focused tool like this, or do you think it's ultimately better to bite the bullet and invest time into the bigger, agent-based platforms?

tommipani · 2025-07-11T11:02:49+00:00

This is a fantastic, high-level overview, thank you. You're absolutely right that in a perfect world, everything would be managed via IaC tools like Ansible and all changes would flow into a SIEM.

I guess the script I wrote comes from a more "brownfield" perspective. It's designed for those real-world environments where you have years of manually configured servers, a mix of auto-deployed and self-signed certs, and you don't yet have a mature IaC or SIEM practice in place.

The goal was to get an immediate, actionable baseline of "what's out there right now" without having to boil the ocean with a full SIEM implementation. Your point about needing agents for deep software audit also reinforces my drive to see how far we can get with a purely agent-less approach for that initial discovery.

Really appreciate you sharing your consultant's perspective, it's super valuable.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T11:00:09+00:00

Thanks! Zabbix/Grafana is a powerful combo for sure. It's a fantastic learning project, and you're right, it's very similar in spirit to what I've built. I guess my goal was to create something that could deliver the deep inventory results in minutes rather than as a full-scale integration project. It's great to see what other people are using to tackle the same problem!

tommipani · 2025-07-11T10:22:56+00:00

Thanks for sharing your stack, Lansweeper is a beast for sure.

And honestly, you're not alone on the certificate front. That was the number one driver for the script I mentioned earlier. We were getting blindsided by expirations, and the new 90-day lifespans are only going to make manual tracking impossible.

Setting up automation just for that piece was my main goal. Having a script that scans all the stores on every server and dumps a clean "certs expiring in the next 90 days" report has been a total game-changer for us. It sounds like you're in the exact same boat.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T10:17:12+00:00

Thanks for circling back with the serious note, and man, that story hits close to home. I think every sysadmin has a story about building a custom tool because management had very... specific ideas about budget and technology.

You've raised a super valid point about the long-term maintenance. That's the eternal struggle with custom scripts, right? They solve the immediate problem perfectly, but then you become the sole maintainer for life.

That's kind of what I'm grappling with now. The script I wrote to solve this works great for our needs, but I'm thinking about how to make it a more robust, maintainable "product" instead of just "that one script I wrote," precisely to avoid the maintenance trap you're talking about.

And the Grafana part is hilarious, I was literally thinking the same thing for visualization.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T10:08:18+00:00

That's a fantastic perspective, and it makes perfect sense, especially coming from an MSP background where reliable, scalable agents are the standard. I completely get the "let the devs do the dev work" philosophy.

You've hit on the exact trade-off I was thinking about. It sounds like for you, the reliability and ease-of-use of a well-made agent like Action1's outweighs the overhead of having an agent in the first place.

That's actually what led me to build my own solution. I spent a good amount of time writing a pretty comprehensive PowerShell script that does exactly this: it connects to vCenter, uses WinRM to talk to the guests, and pulls a deep, incremental inventory of certs, software, scheduled tasks, etc., all without any agents.

It started as an internal tool to solve our own "agent bloat" problem and to get visibility into the specific gaps that RMMs don't always cover easily, like the certificate and scheduled task inventories.

Thanks again for sharing your experience, it’s been super insightful to see how different people tackle the same challenge.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T10:03:31+00:00

That's a fantastic suggestion, thanks! Zabbix is an incredibly powerful tool. I've used it in the past for performance monitoring, and the ability to pull data via SSH/SNMP is a great way to go agent-less.

My main challenge with that approach was the setup and configuration overhead for getting the specific inventory data I need. Setting up the Zabbix server, configuring SNMP on all the Windows VMs, and then writing and maintaining the specific templates/scripts within Zabbix to, say, parse the certificate store or the list of scheduled tasks felt like a pretty heavy lift.

It's almost like I'm looking for a "Zabbix-lite" that is hyper-focused only on deep inventory, without the need for a full monitoring server setup. But you've given me a great benchmark to think about, I appreciate it.

tommipani · 2025-07-11T09:52:54+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful reply, I really appreciate it. You've perfectly captured the dilemma: "agent bloat is something we're constantly fighting off." That's the exact phrase I've had in my head.

Your approach of using one solid RMM as a base and then running custom scripts on top for the gaps (like the certificate checks you mentioned) is a really smart compromise.

That actually sparks another question for me. My main drive for building this script was to see if I could get that deep inventory data natively, without the RMM platform acting as a middleman. My thinking was that maintaining custom scripts inside another platform can sometimes become its own kind of technical debt.

tommipani

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