Admin Arsenal is an affordable systems management and monitoring solution for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). Its publisher, Brisworks, raffles five free licenses, each worth $399, for 4sysops readers. Admin Arsenal isn’t licensed per client machine as many other system management tools are; you just need a license for every administrator who will use the tool. I tested Admin Arsenal and was surprised at how easy systems management can be. I could start working immediately without even consulting the manual.

Admin Arsenal offers the most important systems management functions: software and hardware inventory, software deployment, and remote management. Furthermore, it has essential monitoring features such as performance counters and event log monitoring. It doesn’t support OS deployment or patch management; however, considering that Microsoft offers two “free” SMB tools for this purpose, i.e., Windows Deployment Services (WDS) and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), this is not really a shortcoming.

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In my last article I introduced Admin Arsenal, Brisworks’ system management tool for small and mid-sized businesses. Today I will describe its components, i.e., hardware and software inventory, software deployment, and monitoring, in detail.

Admin Arsenal organizes computer objects in collections. There are two types of collections, static and dynamic. A static collection is populated manually, i.e., you can just drag computer objects to the corresponding folder. A dynamic collection is based on criteria you configure and is populated automatically whenever you access its folder. Criteria can be combined and use almost any hardware or software property. For example, you can configure a collection that contains all Windows XP SP3 machines using a shared printer. Collections can be organized in folders and subfolders, allowing you to create a hierarchy of computer property-based containers.

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In my last post I reviewed Admin Arsenal’s inventory and monitoring features. Today I will show you how you can use this nifty tool to deploy software and manage computers remotely.

Software deployment is fairly easy with Admin Arsenal. You just have to select a collection and choose the MSI, MSU, or EXE file. It is also possible to remotely install software on a single computer or multiple computers by selecting each computer separately. Admin Arsenal supports unattended installations, you can uninstall or repair software, and it is possible to restart computers after an installation, if necessary. All prior remote installations are listed in the deployment interface.

Admin Arsenal starts immediately with the installation on all selected computers, which means there will be no delays, as you might know from enterprise software deployment solutions. The installation will fail if a computer isn’t online. Admin Arsenal won’t try again later; thus you must ensure that all machines are reachable before you start the deployment process. Because Admin Arsenal supports Wake on LAN, this shouldn’t be a problem for small and mid-sized networks.

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