PhoneFactor offers an easy to implement and inexpensive solution for IT groups that want to implement two-factor mobile phone based authentication without the overhead of physical tokens and licensing.

PhoneFactor is free for up to 25 users and reasonably priced after that. The beauty of PhoneFactor is that it utilizes something users already have – a mobile phone – as a token rather than a proprietary device.

PhoneFactor Agent, the software behind the service, acts as a RADIUS server for authentication to network resources such as a VPN. When a user attempts authentication, he will still first be prompted for a user name and password. After he enters those details, the service will place a call to his phone and require the user to answer the call and press the “#” button. Once this is completed, the user is successfully authenticated.

In this tutorial we will install the Agent on Windows Server 2008 R2, integrate with Active Directory, link a few user accounts, and set up a RADIUS server.

Getting started

You can download the PhoneFactor Agent after registering here. You will need a mobile phone to register since PhoneFactor utilizes their own system on their customer portal. Run the installer and launch the PhoneFactor Agent. You will be greeted by the Authentication Configuration Wizard, where you can:

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Zenmap is an Open Source GUI for the free Windows network scanner nmap.

Nmap is a tool that needs no introduction. Quite arguably it should be in the hands, or at least the back pocket, of most systems administrators. Nmap can perform network host and service discovery, security scans, OS fingerprinting, and a whole lot more. Zenmap, a highly functional GUI for nmap, helps ease the learning curve by providing a user-friendly interface for both building scans and viewing scan results or reports. Plus, Zenmap is a multi-platform application that runs on Windows as well as Linux and Mac.

The Windows Zenmap GUI

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This article introduces a brand-new freeware utility from EMCO that can help you to collect information about installed programs and patches from network PCs and track installation changes remotely.

Submitted by Igor Vinnykov

According to the Windows 7 Programs and Components info, I have 85 applications and 118 updates installed on my PC. No doubt, it’s hard to keep in mind all these installed programs even for a single PC, and I have to open the Programs and Components view every time I need to check the software installed on the PCs in my network. If you use the same approach when you need to audit installed software, let me show how you can optimize your software inventory procedures using the free Network Software Scanner utility from EMCO Software.

The Welcome screen of EMCO Network Software Scanner

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In this article you will be introduced to the free VM-to-Cloud Calculator utility from SolarWinds. With this tool you can gather an inventory of your virtual machine infrastructure and perform cost-comparisons for three major cloud VM hosting solutions.

Does your organization employ a virtual machine (VM) infrastructure for server and/or desktop systems? Are you considering migrating some or all of these VMs to a cloud-based hosting infrastructure?

VM cloud pricing details

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In this article you will be introduced to the free Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor utility from SolarWinds. With this tool you can watch network utilization statistics for multiple interfaces in real time

One of the duties of many Windows systems administrator is network management. That is, you may be called to detect, diagnose, troubleshoot and resolve network interface slowdowns.

As your network grows in complexity to include multiple line-of-business (LOB) Web applications, load-balancing configurations, and the like, interface troubleshooting and performance monitoring can easily become extremely cumbersome and complex.

Monitoring an interface with SolarWinds Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor

To assist us in this effort, SolarWinds gives us the Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor. This is a free utility that enables us to monitor network bandwidth utilization statistics for multiple interfaces in real time.

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Workspace Manager Express stores desktop and application settings in a central database, which in some cases allows you to replace roaming user profiles.

Would you like to reduce your reliance on Windows roaming user profiles and the hassle that can be caused by corrupt profiles? How about having sub 20-second logon for all users? What about settings that work across all platforms and architectures, configured from one central place? Or applying just-in-time settings to applications as needed rather than all at the beginning of the user session?

Workspace Manager Express

Sounds great? All of this functionality is available for free with a tool that’s been around for a while: Workspace Manager Express from RES Software.

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In this article you will be introduced to the free SolarWinds Web Transaction Watcher utility, which enables you to record and monitor a Web transaction for quality assurance, performance tuning, and troubleshooting purposes.

Now more than ever before in your career as a Windows systems administrator, you may find yourself partially or fully responsible for the availability of your company’s Web applications. “But I’m not a Web admin!” you might exclaim. Like it or not, the migration of applications from the desktop to the Web browser means that we systems admins must take ownership of application uptime, regardless of form factor.

Here are some thought questions for you to consider: Does your organization do business over the Web? If so, how can you verify that your e-commerce engine is functional at any particular point in time? How can you diagnose bottlenecks and latencies in your Web application from the user’s’ perspective?

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Verax NMS is a network and application monitoring software running on Windows, Linux, Solaris and AIX. The free, “Express” version is limited to 25 managed elements.

Submitted by Eugene Rublovka

Verax NMS supports network elements (CISCO, Juniper, Adva, Foundry , etc.), applications (MySQL, Oracle RDBMS, Microsoft Internet Information Server, Apache Tomcat, IBM WebSphere, etc.), and data center elements (IP cameras, power supplies, etc.) in a single, integrated system.

Network and application monitoring – Verax NMS – Sensor summary

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SysAdmin Anywhere is a free Active Directory management tool for computers, user accounts, and groups. The tools also support Active Directory reporting.

Submitted by Igor Markin

The program allows you to manage users, groups, client computers, servers and domains. Metro interface makes the program easy. You do not need to install software on the server.

Active Directory Management -SysAdmin Anywhere

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This post is a short tutorial for the alternative WPKG client WPKG-GP. It allows you to remotely install software via Group Policy.

Now that we have configured WPKG on the server side, all that remains to be done, is to tell our client system to run the WPKG script (with administrator privileges). WPKG should then manage our software as per our config files. Whereas the WPKG project does provide a client, I prefer to use the alternative WPKG-GP client.

The reason I prefer WPKG-GP is that it hooks into the startup process via Group Policy extensions, and runs WPKG before users have a chance to login, so you don’t need to worry about applications being open when you are trying to upgrade them.

Once you downloaded WPKG-GP, run the setup, and install all components. For simplicity we will enable local policies, although it is possible to configure WPKG-GP via Group Policy. During the setup process you will need to browse to the file share where you copied the WPKG files to. The final screen of the installer will ask you for an account that has permissions to connect to the WPKG share. I suggest creating a dedicated account for WPKG for this.  Don’t forget to give this account read access to your WPKG share!

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WPKG is an Open Source software deployment tool that allows you to install software, upgrade and remove applications on remote Windows computers.

The great thing about WPKG is that it doesn’t require any infrastructure other than an SMB network share, oh, and it’s free! To follow this introductory tutorial to WPKG, head over to the download page to get the latest version of WPKG, unzip the file and copy hosts.xml, packages.xml, profiles.xml and wpkg.js to C:\WPKG or a location of your choice. You should also share this folder, as you will need to access it over the network.

WPKG configuration files

The wpkg.js file is the main engine of WPKG. It first looks through the various XML configuration files, and then runs any required commands to install, upgrade or remove software from your client systems.

So-called profiles are defined in profiles.xml. A profile basically contains a list of software packages that will be installed on the remote system.

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nspaces is a free Virtual Desktop Manager that allows you to password protect workspaces.

Submitted by Dion Zhu

Virtual desktops are always useful for separating your work into multiple workspaces for more efficiently organizing and managing your work. nSpaces is a virtual desktop manager application to manage multiple workspaces.

Virtual Desktop Manager – nspaces

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In this first part of four posts we’ll examine what SCM v2 is and why it’s such an important tool for sysadmins and we’ll cover installation options as well as introduce the main console.

This review was written on SCM v2 beta, the beta period has ended and SCM v2 is now available for download here. Note that the release date on the download page is incorrect, this is the final RTW (Release To Web) version of SCM v2.

Foreword

Group Policy is one of the most powerful tools in a sysadmin’s arsenal, not only for making sure users don’t get themselves into too much trouble but also to establish security standards across client and server machines.

For quite some years Microsoft have produced security guidance for Group Policy, what settings to use and how to configure them but most administrators don’t have time to trawl through lots of documentation. To make it easier for busy administrators to make well informed decisions when building Group Policy Objects (GPOs) Microsoft published the free tool Security Compliance Manager (SCM) v1 in early 2010.

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vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer provides the capabilities to optimize the performance of Windows for use in VDI environments, with the possibility to dramatically increase the scalability of VDI environments.

Submitted Michel Roth

Quest just launched a new free tool on the vWorkspace Community called the vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer. It is important to note that this tool not only works for Quest vWorkspace but also works for other desktop virtualization product like Citrix XenDesktop and VMware View or other.

Tests have shown that the impact of the vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer can be quite big.

VDI performance -  vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer

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WMI Explorer allows you to browse WMI classes, objects and their properties and execute any WMI query.

This is part three of a three part series of articles covering two great WMI tools, the second and final tool being WMI Explorer.

WMI Explorer v1.10 is another lightweight (at 533KB), portable tool. To demonstrate its abilities I need to use WMI to find something I don’t already know and without using any books or the web. My example is to list the games I have installed and the path. The first step is to connect to a different namespace, as in the screenshot below.

WMI Explorer – Connecting to different namespaces

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