Product Details
Product Rating
Avocent DSR4010
Cenergy
Ideal Administration
Laplink Gold
NetSupport Manager
PC-Duo Enterprise
pcAnywhere
Radmin Remote Administrator
Raritan Dominion KSX
RemotelyAnywhere Enterprise Edition
WhatsUp SQL Server Monitor
The software products generally matched our minimum requirements for remote control and file transfer, and the final choice depended on the range and usefulness of the extra features on offer. We chose PC-Duo as our Best Buy for its range of applications.
We felt that NetSupport Manager provided the facilities needed for day to day administration of Windows networks.
Remote management (2004)
Remote management may have you dreaming about the end of late-night treks to the office, but Ian Parsons shows how that is merely one of many benefits
The remote management toolkit used to contain a dial-up connection and a terminal emulator program, but there are few networks around today that could be managed with such simple facilities. Networks have grown in capability and complexity, and there are now solutions with a wide range of capabilities. Today's support technician or administrator will expect to have a remote GUI into a Windows system, and a terminal emulation into a network appliance.
Security aspects for management have changed too. In the beginning, security issues could be addressed by using a simple dial-back modem and password protection, but now we must have encrypted sessions, user authentication and permission lists. Remote management tools simplify network administration and support, but they also provide greater opportunities for unauthorized mayhem. The wise administrator will make full use of the security features available in these products to ensure that those with unfriendly intentions do not cause trouble.
Remote management is not just about accessing your network without needing to be on site, although you could be forgiven for thinking so. Remote management tools can simplify management tasks, make support and troubleshooting efforts more effective, and save valuable time. Technical support personnel are rare and expensive resources, and anything that makes better use of them (and saves their sanity) contributes to the efficiency of the organization.
A network's size and complexity doesn't matter either. Some systems are vital to a company?s continued wellbeing, and these are prime candidates for remote management. A firm could probably cope with its accounting system being unavailable for a day, but not its customer service system.
The choice of tools depends on the type of system being managed. A site that is running internet services has different needs to a site that operates solely within a business. There may be a mix of workstations and servers running different types of software, a medium-sized business network could have one hundred Windows workstations, several Windows servers, Linux file and print servers, a Unix box running specialized applications and a NetWare server, while an internet business will be heavy on servers and network devices but with few workstations. The systems here are just as likely to be running Unix or Linux as Windows, and you will find Macs in publishers and design shops.
In order to carry out remote management functions on a network, the administrator needs to have the ability to remotely control a system using a local keyboard and display. We looked for the sort of facilities that could be used during an average system administrator's day, such as managing user accounts, transferring files, gathering statistics and troubleshooting a problem program on a server. We also looked at the product's security capabilities, and features beyond the basic remote control functionality.
All the software needs Windows, and is generally expected to administer only Windows servers, although some can also talk to Mac and Linux systems. None of the products could control network devices such as routers. The hardware-based keyboard/video/mouse (KVM) switches could communicate with anything that had a compatible interface, so these would be your first choice if you need to control network devices, or are using other operating systems besides Windows. Where a site operates a mix of servers and network devices, a combination of KVM switches and some of the remote management software would be the best choice, depending on the level of control required.
As most of the software offerings were aimed at Windows systems, we chose to use Windows 2000 Server with Active Directory for our server, while the workstation software was Windows XP Professional.
The applications tended to concentrate on the server management function, paying less attention to monitoring and supporting user workstations. User support generally devolves to helpdesk personnel, with administration and technical support staff becoming involved in more serious troubleshooting, but this is still a network administration function, and it is often necessary to resolve the problem at the workstation rather than the server. In these situations, the ability to remotely control the workstation is very useful, and where the device is geographically remote it is a necessity.
When making comparisons, the mix of hardware and software products posed some problems. The hardware solutions were highly capable devices with similar functionality. We felt that the Avocent device offered more flexibility since its 16 ports could be connected to any combination of the supported devices, while the Raritan segregated its connections into eight KVM connections and eight serial devices. However, the Raritan could also support Mac systems, while the Avocent did not. Therefore, your choice of device should depend on your particular mix of servers and appliances.
