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Submitted by Igor Vinnykov
For many years, network administrators who need to execute commands and processes remotely have had to setup a Telnet or SSH access or use a remote desktop connection. Those approaches have some limitations, so the PsExec utility released by the Sysinternals team managed to gain its current popularity very quickly as an easy-to-use solution with zero configuration required. A similar light-weight remote command-line access is also provided by a free EMCO Remote Console tool introduced in this article. EMCO Remote Console’s extended functionality includes a graphic user interface to make the use of a remote command prompt even easier.
EMCO Remote Console - Remote command execution
First time you start EMCO Remote Console, you need to initiate scanning of the local network in order to detect available PCs. The application can extract network information from the Active Directory and display the domain structure with organization units. Also, it can scan and display PCs that belong to workgroups. When the network has been scanned, you can select the required PC to connect to and open the command-line prompt.
You don't need to undertake any special configurations of remote PCs to connect to them nor install any client software manually. However, you need to ensure that you have an administrative access to the remote PCs, otherwise your connection will be rejected. The same requirement is valid for the PsExec tool: if you don't have an administrative access to a remote PC, you have to specify the user name and password as the PsExec command-line parameters every time you initiate connection. When using EMCO Remote Console, you can specify alternate credentials once and apply them to a particular PC or group of PCs.
EMCO Remote Console - Applying Alternate Credentials
When connection to a remote host is established, you can execute commands and processes in the same way you do during a local CMD session. You can open multiple consoles with multiple hosts, if required, and keep them running in parallel. The list of the opened consoles is restored on the application restart, so you only need to reconnect to them to continue your work. All the opened consoles are fully interactive, and you can use the same features as available for a local CMD session. In particular, you have an access to the executed commands history and can repeat a command without retyping it. You can use Ctrl-C, Ctrl-Break and other shortcuts to manage the commands execution.
EMCO Remote Console can be considered a light-weight alternative to the Telnet and SSH access, which doesn't require a manual client installation or client configuration. You can also use it instead of PsExec if you prefer to work with GUI tools and would like to benefit from its interactive console functionality and other features.
