Looking for management tool

[Mans]

Hi,

We are looking for a good and not too complex operations management/system
management tool for Windows 2000/XP environment. Capabilities should
include:

- Easy to use centralized software distibution to Windows XP clients
- Management of Active Directory objects (GPOs, user groups, users, OUs etc)
- (At least partly) web based
- Monitoring features
- Easy to setup and maintain
- No too expensive

All and any suggestions/experiences shared are greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Mans

 

[Matjaz Ladava [MVP]]

If this is not a big organization, then Small Business Server 2003 suite
will have (in couple of months) all that you just described ;-)
I know that this is not what you asked for, but if your organization is
bigger than 75 (SBS 2003 limit) clients then it should have a professional
administrator to know all this things as they can be done w/o much effort
with existing tools.

--
Regards

Matjaz Ladava, MCSE (NT4 & 2000), Windows MVP
(e-mail address removed)
http://ladava.com

 

[Adrian Coleasa]

What you need is partially covered by SMS, take a look at the SMS 2003
preview
(http://www.microsoft.com/smserver/evaluation/future/sms2003beta.asp).

A rather cheap, easy to use and implement product could be Executive
Software's Sitekeeper (http://www.execsoft.com/sitekeeper/sitekeeper.asp),
but it would cover only the software installs, license tracking,
hardware/software assets inventory...

For AD management, besides Win's own tools (which aren't bad at all, in any
way), you can take a look at Aelita's offerings, like Enterprise Directory
Manager (http://www.aelita.com/products/EDM4.htm), or NetPro's Active
Directory Lifecycle Suite (www.netpro.com), but I kinda doubt it will be
cheap.

 

[Mike Matheny]

Also, look at Dameware NT Utilities - remote control, install, remove
services, open up command window as second logon on remote PC, much better
event log manager, much, much more, and it's only $200 and there is no extra
charge for any PCs that you manage with it - manage 1 or 1000! - it's one of
my all-time favorite utils.

 

[Dave]

or Hyena, excellent tool.

Also, look at Dameware NT Utilities - remote control, install, remove
services, open up command window as second logon on remote PC, much better
event log manager, much, much more, and it's only $200 and there is no extra
charge for any PCs that you manage with it - manage 1 or 1000! - it's one of
my all-time favorite utils.

 

[Mike Matheny]

Hyena is almost a clone of Dameware NTU with fewer capabilities.