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).

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)