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

(more…)

Rate this tool: (2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

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

(more…)

Rate this tool: (5 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

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!

(more…)

Rate this tool: (5 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

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.

(more…)

Rate this tool: (5 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

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

(more…)

Rate this tool: (3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

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.

(more…)

Rate this tool: (6 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

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

(more…)

Rate this tool: (2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

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

(more…)

Rate this tool: (3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

Zetetic.Events is a free command-line tool that can quickly scan and filter multiple running Windows Event Logs, and archived .evt and .evtx files, in parallel.

Submitted by Steve Kradel

It taps into the new 2008 / Windows 7 logging infrastructure when available, but will fall back to 2003 mode when necessary, and supports filtering on event IDs, and start and end dates, as well as text within the event message.

Zetetic.Events automatically discovers your environment’s domain controllers, which makes it especially valuable for diagnosing login failures, account lockouts, and security audit events.

Here is an example:

ZeShell -e 4728-4758,after=19-July-2011
-----------------------------------------------------
Event ID:    4728
Level:       Information
Keywords:    Audit Success
Publisher:   Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing
Created:     7/20/2011 2:35:17 PM
Machine:     dc-1.demo.net
Log:         Security
Description: A member was added to a security-enabled global group.

Subject:
        Security ID:            S-1-5-21-950928700-2040260430-2032203972-500
        Account Name:           Administrator
        Account Domain:         DEMO
        Logon ID:               0x454d11

Member:
        Security ID:            S-1-5-21-950928700-2040260430-2032203972-187428
        Account Name:           CN=Uncle Fester,OU=ZetDemo,DC=demo,DC=net

Group:
        Security ID:            S-1-5-21-950928700-2040260430-2032203972-187514
        Group Name:             Global1
        Group Domain:           DEMO

Additional Information:
        Privileges:             -

Rate this tool: (3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

This is part two of a three part series of articles covering two great WMI tools, the first tool being Microsoft's free WMI Code Creator.

WMI Code Creator is a tiny (300KB) Microsoft tool available here. To demonstrate its features, the code snippet below is for querying a machine’s model and gives us enough info to start using the tool.

strComputer = "."
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
strQuery="SELECT * from Win32_ComputerSystem"
Set col=GetObject("WinMgmts://" & strComputer & "/root/cimv2").ExecQuery(strQuery)
For Each WMIProperty in col
PCModel = WMIProperty.Model

First, I need to select the CIMV2 namespace and then find the win32_computersystem class in the class drop-down box. Without reference to a huge book or the internet, you would struggle to discover the properties in the class without perhaps writing a script. Code creator makes this trivial, with the click of a single button which lists all properties. The model is just one property of many, as you can see in figure 2 below:

(more…)

Rate this tool: (2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

The free version of SetACL allows you to manage permissions for Windows objects such as folders or printers by manging their access control list on the command line.

Submitted by Helge Klein

If you look under the hood of Windows you find permissions everywhere. Files and folders, registry keys, network shares, printers, services and WMI objects – all of these have security descriptors storing ownership, permission and auditing information. That opens up powerful management options and SetACL is the great tool for the job. It sets and lists permissions practically anywhere in the system, locally and over the network, from the command line, scripts or programs.

SetACL – Manage access control lists (more…)

Rate this tool: (4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

Delprof2 allows you to delete a user profile. It is an extended version of Microsoft's Delprof and works on all Windows versions including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Submitted by Helge Klein – Website: helgeklein.com

While user profiles are great for personalization, sometimes a cleanup is required and some or all profiles need to be deleted. As it turns out, Windows has no tool for automating this task from the command line. There used to be a tool called Delprof, but it does not work correctly on Windows 7 and Server 2008 (R2). Delprof2 does. It is a kind of unofficial successor to Delprof. Although it is more powerful than the original it is still syntax-compatible, so existing scripts can be reused without any change.

Delprof2 – Delete user profile

(more…)

Rate this tool: (2 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

Console is a free portable Windows Command Prompt alternative that supports multiple-line copy and paste, comfortable window resizing, and tabs.

Windows is not really made to be managed from a command-line interface, and the somewhat primitive Windows Command Prompt stresses this fact. But the strongest side of Windows is that, for every weakness, a third party steps into the breach—and, in many cases, the stopgap is free. (Which is why the 4sysops list of free Windows admin tools now already contains 343 tools.) Console is another candidate.

Windows Command Prompt alternative – Console

(more…)

Rate this tool: (2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

The free TFTP Server from WhatsUp Gold allows you to securely transfer operating system software or device configuration files across computers and devices in your network.

Submitted by Ipswitch

Are you a network engineer who is looking for an always-on, service based tool to simplify and secure the transfer of system or configuration files across your network? The WhatsUp Gold free TFTP Server allows you to save time and effort while uploading and downloading files.

WhatsUP Gold free TFTP Server

(more…)

Rate this tool: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

Microsoft's free Active Directory Topology Diagrammer tool allows you to import Active Directory and Exchange structures into Visio 2010.

Active Directory Topology Diagrammer 2.2 was released a few weeks ago. This Visio functionality is not new. In former Visio versions, you could just import the Active Directory structure directly. The main advantage of the Active Directory Topology Diagrammer is its greater flexibility. Several filters allow you to decide which Active Directory components you want to import. This is especially useful for large organizations.

Active Directory topology in Visio

(more…)

Rate this tool: (4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools