Michael’s Update: This great free tool has been submitted more than two years ago by Jeffrey Botts. Since then quite a few new features have been added and because Spiceworks 4.6 is now out, I updated this post. The top new features follow after Jeffrey’s original comment and at the end of the article you will find some screenshots of the new version.

Submitted by Jeffrey Botts, November 2007

You want network management software that works for you, not software that makes you work. You wish you could have it… without spending a fortune. Your wish is granted.

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In my last article I covered ManageEngine Desktop Central’s capabilities with regard to configuration management, software deployment, and patch management. I outlined that all three tasks are basically Configurations. Desktop Central has a few functions that are not organized as Configurations.

The integrated Inventory solution is one of these. It has its own tab where all inventory settings are configured and where you can access all inventory data. You can either scan all your computers manually or schedule regular scans. Desktop Central supports hardware and software inventory. You can retrieve information, such as the number of installations of a certain program or a certain device. With a few mouse clicks you can find out on which machines a certain program has been installed. Programs can be arranged in categories. My favorite feature is the Prohibited Software function. Whenever Desktop Central finds a program in this list, it will just be uninstalled.

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In my last post in this series, I discussed the concept behind ManageEngine Desktop Central. Today, I want to dig a little deeper and describe some of Desktop Central’s capabilities. As outlined before, all management tasks are basically Configurations. There are two types of Configurations: User Configurations and Computer Configurations. Computer Configurations are applied during startup and User Configurations are applied during user logon. Both configurations are also applied every 90 minutes.

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ZOHO Corp. (formerly AdventNet), the publishers of ManageEngine Desktop Central, sponsors two licenses of its Windows client management solution’s Professional Edition. The winner will get licenses for 100 computers (worth $995) and the runner 50 (worth $545). If you want to take part in this contest, you just have to send an email to:

with the subject line ManageEngine Desktop Central. Please, add your name and the name of your organization. The deadline is July 12, 2009.

It would be great if you also answer this question:

What type of reports should a client management tool have?

Since ManageEngine Desktop Central has quite a few features, I will introduce this web-based Windows management software by three articles.

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The five winners of the Admin Arsenal contest have been drawn. I used the services of random.org to calculate the corresponding random numbers. They use atmospheric noise to compute true random numbers, so you can be sure that it was a fair contest. If you are among the winners, then you should have received an email from Brisworks, the sponsor of this contest, by now. If you haven’t been lucky this time, I encourage you to have a look at Admin Arsenal. This systems management tool is certainly worth its price. You don’t even have to register to download the free 30-day trial.

In the future, you will have the chance to win other admin tools as I am planning to run such contests frequently. I created a page that lists all 4sysops prize games. At the moment you have the chance to win a license of AutoAdministrator 2.0, a nifty tool that lets you automate all kinds of typical Windows administration tasks. There will be more tools to come soon.

Below are some of the responses of the participants in the Admin Arsenal contest. I want to say thanks to all who agreed to allow me to publish their answers to this question:

Describe the biggest challenge that you face as a Windows system administrator.

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In my last article, I gave a general introduction to AutoAdministrator, a nifty tool that lets you automate all kinds of Windows administrator tasks. Now let’s have a closer look at AutoAdministrator’s functions.

Online Status

Before you perform a particular action, it is advisable to check whether the relevant computers are available. With AutoAdministrator, you can ping any number of computers with just two mouse clicks. You can configure the packet count, the packet size, the required success rate, and the maximum roundtrip time. The latter two options determine whether a machine is flagged as available or whether you receive an error message.

Services

This function is certainly one of AutoAdministrator’s highlights. Managing system services on multiple machines is a feature that many expensive system management solutions lack. AutoAdministrator enables you to query, start, stop, continue, pause, and restart services. Furthermore, you can configure the startup type remotely. You can, for example, use this feature to set the startup type of the Remote Registry service on all your machines to automatic, to ensure that you can use all of the features of AutoAdministrator. It is also possible to remove services, or to configure their logon account.

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NETIKUS.NET, the publisher of EventSentry, is raffling off ten AutoAdministrator licenses, available to 4sysops readers. AutoAdministrator clearly demonstrates that no command prompt or scripting language is needed to “automate” system administration tasks on multiple computers. This useful tool costs only $69 US and can save you a lot of time. It would certainly be a lot more expensive for your organization to ask you to program scripts with the same capabilities. Moreover, AutoAdministrator is multi-threaded. You can’t easily do that with a script, and that can reduce the time it takes to perform certain updates 10-fold (e.g. with 10 threads).

AutoAdministrator 2.0 lets you query or manage nine different settings on multiple computers: Services (query and edit services), Password (manage user passwords), Registry (view or change registry values), File Management (copy and delete files and folders), File Information (view file details), Logons (view users logged on), Shutdown/Reboot, Online Status (ping hosts), and ODBC (query and manage DSNs).

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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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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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