Essential Open Source Tools For Windows Admins
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's J. Peter Bruzzese provides a list of 15 open source tools for enhancing your Windows server-side experience. 'You might imagine that the best place to go for improving your Microsoft server-side experience is to the mothership itself. In many cases, you would be right. But the truth is there are a meaningful number of open source tools that go above and beyond what Microsoft has to offer in support of Windows Server, Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint. Many of these alternatives provide — for free — more powerful capabilities than what you'd get with third-party retail products.'"
Linux
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Cygwin is the first thing every windows server needs installed.
"Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 15: VirtualBox" -- TFA
*this space intentionally left blank
"One of the four pointers saying 'come and see', and I saw, and beheld a white
7-Zip, Notepad++, TrueCrypt, UltraVNC
This site is crucial to not being driven insane by the default AD management tools (we use 2008 R2), and getting more hardware with my budget.
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Tools I agree with:
-Wireshark
-NMAP
Tools I disagree with:
-UltraDefrag: Windows Vista and Windows 7 include built-in, very capable, automatic defragmentation tools
Everything else is on a situational basis and depends largely on your environment. If you've got a massively virtualized system, Virtualbox is not necessary.
This list is fairly poor, but I just wanted to draw negative attention to UltraDefrag and all third party defrag programs. A lot of people use third party solutions but very few actually know why they are using them, except for claims like "they are better!" The truth is that defragging a hard drive is a fairly simple process that is hard to get wrong, you literally just re-organise chunks together into blocks. Windows Defrag gets it right, and to be honest you cannot improve on just getting it right, so why do third party solutions need to offer an alternative? The best they could accomplish is matching the Windows Defragger, and the worst is that they could do a poorer job...
I can't really say much from experience with most of these, but clamwin? I am always in favor of open source when it is on the same league as paid software, but in this particular case... you are just asking for trouble if you cut this corner.
You proved his point! With Linux, code doesn't take anywhere near as much time to write as it does on Windows - so your engineers wasted their time (although they aren't really engineers if they used Windows), and Linux software doesn't need maintenance because it doesn't break with every release of the OS. Third party software you bought? You don't *have* to buy any software on Linux because it's all free - you clearly work for a company run by clueless sheep or you're a shill if you even consider Windows to be a positive part of any infrastructure.
I would add Metasploit to the list, that is if you have any kind of custom website (most companies do). It would suck to have your user accounts or personal data spread all across the internet.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If your engineers are writing code that isn't portable to Linux or Mac then you have bigger problems than you think. They are painting you into a corner of inflexibility and dependency on one single vendor, and unable to harness the benefits of other systems as they appear.
Instead of defending their poor practices, you might want to consider giving them a kick up the backside, possibly starting with yourself if applicable.
http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/handbook/Credits.html
(Pretty cool!)
* It's a very good defragmentation program, which is WHY I tried to help out their dev. team w/ this suggestion after seeing others complain of CPU usage & what-not in their forums...
APK
P.S.=> Process Priority Control is credited to me there (after I gave the authors some easily ported Borland Delphi + Windows API calls code (the REAL "active ingredient" was in API calls), in order to port it into C for UltraDefrag -> http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2993462&group_id=199532&atid=969873 which is VERY easy to do for an experienced developer): "Will wonders NEVER cease..."...
... apk
There doesn't seem to be any Amanda servers for Windows, only clients.
While I truly love wireshark, if we're talking microsoft server admin, you might want to think about Microsoft Network Monitor (current ver == 3.4). It does most of what wireshark does but pairs packet streams to windows processes. If you're on an enterprise premier support call with Microsoft, they'll only accept a pcap from netmon.
I know haters will hate and Slashdotters love to hate Microsoft, but honestly, what the hell does open source tools have to do with the Borg Face?
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
If Windows had a decent file system defragmenters would be a thing of the past. Windows is the only (supposedly) serious server side OS that requires them. I've yet to have to defrag my 1999 vintage linux file server.
UltraDefrag can do one thing that few other can, it can defrag *before* Windows boots.
This allows moving the most-used files towards the beginning of the drive, where it's
fastest.
Pagefile, Event Logs and all Registry files benefits most. Here's an config-example,
set UD_IN_FILTER=Pagefile;SysEvent;AppEvent;SecEvent;Windows\System32\config;ntuser;usrclass
What is handy is Netscan and Treesize...
but thats just me....
If you hate having multiple RDP, SSH, Telnet etc windows all over your desktop you should look at mRemote NG.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
It might be ok for checking a suspicious file or two but scanning an entire drive would take days. Its THAT slow, seriously.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
If you kinda want a free email server that's manageable with a clean GUI and is built off of robust FOSS software, here it is:
http://www.hmailserver.com/
SysInternals - The best toolset for Windows. It is pity that the it's author was hired be the evil MS....
IN fact, even when you look @ other defraggers (commercial ones) like PerfectDisk &/or Diskeeper (if not O&O) for example?
There are MANY variations on the defrag strategy programmatically!
So, what you're stating here:
"Windows Defrag gets it right, and to be honest you cannot improve on just getting it right, so why do third party solutions need to offer an alternative? The best they could accomplish is matching the Windows Defragger" - by Manip (656104) on Monday September 19, @11:58AM (#37443118)
Isn't true...
* Additionally, defraggers offer individual file defrags, placements & rejections of defrag of certain files, & much more, that Windows' std. defrag does not (inclusive of a drivemap which Win7/Server2k8 no longer offer, but older models did).
APK
P.S.=> I also spoke to their dev. team personally in forums/email etc. in regards to it also, & had a "small part" in the programs' "evolution", via ProcessPriority control API usage in code -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2435272&cid=37443252 , so I know what these guys went thru and how they did some of the work in it, as well as what options were chosen (such as boottime defrag being another in addition to CPU usage/scheduling priority control, etc./et al)...
... apk
I install Yahoo! toolbar for Internet Explorer before anything, its teh shit.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Any recommendations for a CAD PDM?
clamwin antivirus is devastatingly inferior to microsoft security essentials. google "clamwin userinit.exe" to read about clamwin's false positives leaving computers inoperable back in 2009
What is this 1998? I hear there's some great server products for the NeXT box as well, including this new thing called the "world wide web".
Is there anything similar to iftop [1] for Windows?
[1] http://www.ex-parrot.com/pdw/iftop/
How in the world can you talk about administration in a Windows environment and not mention SpiceWorks.com? It's an end-to-end, 100% free support system and help desk.
I8-D
I use PuTTY daily.
Wow, do these tools give me a sunny beach with palm trees? Spectacular mountain views and waterfalls? Good food? Hot sex?
No? Then please stop calling everything related to using software an experience.You use it to get a job done, that is its purpose. The experience the admin (or any other person that uses software for other reasons than entertainment) has can certainly make a difference, but that facilitates its purpose. Don't treat it as if it is the purpose.
This is what you get if you treat the "experience" as the purpose.
any linux distro's install disk.
Why struggle with the lame duck that is windows? just blow the whole thing away.
As an admin of a small cluster, I can name one, and ONLY one, open source tool that I use in ALL my servers.
Linux.
This signature is lame.
while i am a fan of MS security essentials for end users - MS intentional prevent it from running on their server OS's. (and for good reason, it's not designed for that workload environment). so when it comes to free ClamAV is up there on the server side.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
What do you do with it? i mean, other than file i/o. By itself, a kernel is fairly useless.
Copy and pasta!!!
Actually, I'll save people wanting to kill me, see my above post to the first AC :)
This signature is lame.
I use Windirstat Portable to check who is the "disk eater" user of the day.
Holy moly, but I hate InfoWorld. Without mentioning all the ads, or their apparent unrealization of the fact that browsers have scroll bars (though to be fair they're not the only ones), my biggest complaint is that never, not once have I read one of their articles and gotten what the headline promised.
I think this is generally true for all the IDG 'content' and not because they copy it to about every site in their 'network' (SEO by lots of reciprocal links to sister sites, really).
This is what passes for tech journalism?
No, it's selling ad-space on the promise of content and every so often, albeit rarely, there's something interesting coming out of the IDG 'network'.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
That's true, but MSE isn't licensed for/won't install on servers so it doesn't apply.
http://terminals.codeplex.com/
Portable, open sources tool
Which Linux distribution comes in 15 CDs or DVDs?
my biggest complaint is that never, not once have I read one of their articles and gotten what the headline promised. Isn't Zenmap just a GUI for nmap? Yet both of them are there. Is there a reason to prefer the third-party PowerGUI over the Microsoft Powershell ISE [microsoft.com] other than the former being open source?
Au contraire. It sounds like you got exactly what the headline promised, but you wanted to throw a bunch of closed-source, proprietary tools into the mix.
Ask instead whether lumping software into an "open source" category makes any sense in 2011, from a practical, get-work-done perspective. I've been asking for years -- and I work for InfoWorld. For example, I don't know why anyone would install ClamAV when there are free alternatives like Avast and Microsoft Security Essentials, each of which is way more effective than ClamAV, which requires you to scan individual files manually. So you don't really care about viruses, you just want to use open source? It seems to me, if that's the case, Windows is not the right OS for you.
Breakfast served all day!
In clamwin's defense, almost every major antivirus has had a catastrophic false positive at some point in the last 10 years.
It's a statistical improbability that any of them never will have the same issue.
If you are trying to clean a virus that has infected important system files there is a chance that you will have to delete said system files in order to remove the virus.
Clamav (clamwin's engine) creates an easy to read text file listing all files moved/deleted/cleaned, so I can just look at what was deleted and replace it from the original disks.
Honestly, I prefer an AV that will completely remove the virus, even if that will render the system unbootable. At least that way I know that it wont just reinfect itself again as soon as I reboot.
It may not be "open-source" in that there is no source code available for it, however it is freeware and is required for any Windows Administrator that always has multiple RDP sessions running.
RDTabs
This has been helpful (showing who/what is hogging disk space)
Windirstat
http://windirstat.info/
Thats right Amanda runs on your own cloud computer, not on Windows. And Yes Linux runs the cloud. Ubuntu Linux Claims 12,000 Cloud Deployments
"Silly rabbit Windows are for toys."
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WinSCP
Xming
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Haven't looked at HyperV in ages. I remember when it was trash. Every other virtualization tool available at the time was better suited to the job. Things change, though. Maybe HyperV is worth looking at again - but I tend to stick with what works for me. I'll stick with VirtualBox, and dabble with VMWare, thank you.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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As has been pointed out already, the article deals with MS servers. MSSE is not available for servers, and I don't think that Avast free version is available for servers. ClamAV is free, for servers, for desktops, for workstations, for home use, for enterprise. No restrictions.
What is the cost for Avast on an enterprise server, anyway? Hmmm - looks like $175 for the bargain basement deal, and $250 for the more robust business version. http://www.avast.com/business
That's not a lot of money - unless your business runs on a financial shoestring. In today's economy, a lot of businesses are run on shoestrings!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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I miss Console, great console tool with tabs and you can mix command.com, sh.ex and powershell.exe in the same window .... GREAT!!!
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Can anyone please explain to me why there are no alternatives to the Windows "command prompt" aka cmd.exe? I know about Cygwin, but it's the same ugly cmd.exe window. I don't mean a bash or the powershell, I mean an alternative to the ugly window, that is black and you just have two scrollbars right and bottom.
This ugly window lacks many of the "advanced" features, like simple copy&past (right click copy, right click past), better fonts (why I can't choose from all the true-type fonts available?), maybe some tabs?
I don't know why MS took the effort and time to develop the powershell if it's still running in the 1991 cmd.exe window.
Like that project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ (it's GPL and free of course)
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
I'm running MSE on Windows Server 2008 R2 without issue. MSE can be used on up to 10 small business machines.
It's not installable on a server OS and it's also not licensed to run in a commercial environment with more than 10 PC's. Chances are if your a full time admin for a business you have more than 10 PC's in the office.
letting an idiot know they are an idiot is not a game... it's a responsibility. - by Kristopeit, M. D. (1892582)
Just curious; how do you "leave space for frequently changing files to contract"?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Now that ntbackup has been deprecated, how about a decent backup tool that isn't that horrible abomination that comes bundled with Server 2008+?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
http://nagios.org/ + http://www.edcint.co.nz/checkwmiplus/ = Rolled in Gold
MS does license MSE for installation on their compatible server products, and the installer works without problems. They changed the terms almost a year ago with the release of MSE 2.
File is appended. File now extends (and needs the space). File is truncated, and it contracts. This isn't all that unusual a pattern to see when a file is written to.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
not any more.. They used to prevent it being installed in the earlier version. The current version works great on the server.
Thanks, I'd missed that since they still don't list any severs among the supported OSes. As far as I can tell, they still don't officially support it, but it works.
Stuff that's truly open source:
FileZilla - Their FTP client is wonderful for all the partners I communicate with. Their server is also fantastic although it doesn't host SFTP. .tar.gz.
WinSCP - Just like FileZilla, but scriptable from the command line. The user interface is less nice though.
ImgBurn - Replaces all those crappy CD-burning programs that vendors love to pre-install.
7-Zip - A bit better than ZIP, compresses a bit more, runs a bit faster, and it reads all those lame formats like RAR plus awesome formats like
Notepad++ - The best text editor out there.
FFMPEG - Command line conversion for videos!
PDFCreator - Much nicer than Adobe PDF and free.
Putty - Many of you have said it, but it's still awesome.
Stuff that's free but still useful, well, mostly Foxit Reader.
Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 15: VirtualBox
No. In this case the open source tools are weak; VirtualBox is cool, but in my experience not so stable all the time. Use VMware Workstation or VMware Server or ESXi/Hyper-V/XenServer as appropriate for important admin work.
Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 14: Virtual Router
Hell no... Can anyone spell "pwn m3"?
Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 13: ClamWin Antivirus ... does not come with an on-access real-time scanner ... Although it may not work as well as a commercial real-time option for virus scanning,
Are they fsck'in insane?
Windows admins have good security tools available that actually work... why the heck would we want to trade them for a tool with lower up-front cost but higher cost of ownership in the form of more frequently having systems get infected needing to get rebuild, and all those resulting headaches?
Periodic scanning is essential in a security strategy, but should not be the first line of defense, because it's slow to respond -- scans take along time. The use of real-time tools is practically mandatory in a reasonable end point security strategy.
Having a machine able to infected with no real-time detection mechanisms 12 to 18 hours before the next scheduled scan is a really really bad idea.
So version 2010 FINALLY gets the same archiving that could have been done with any other MTA in the last two decades by adding simple entries to /etc/aliases? They did warn you with the name, Exchange it for something better.
I prefer Treesize
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
The biggest thing third-party defraggers like UltraDefrag bring to the table is the ability to defragment the system at boot time, before all OS services (including the Win32 subsystem, IIRC) are loaded. This allows for the defragmentation of the page file, system registry hives, and other frequently-accessed resources that cannot be modified by the defragmenter once Windows is up and running.
Whoosh.
Files don't need more space to contract; they need more space to expand.
Here's the printer friendly version of said article: http://www.infoworld.com/print/173188
IMHO, IANAL, TINLA, etc...
Perhaps then you should go back and re-read my original sentence: ..."
"... frequently changing files to expand/contract
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
They still don't need space to contract. You could have left it off altogether.
I apologize then for being too specific. Go troll elsewhere.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I'm just explaining Thing 1's joke because you apparently didn't get it.
GnuWin32
CoreUtils
DiffUtils
FindUtils
Gawk
Grep
Sed
WGet
Zip/UnZip
NirSoft
All Utilities (Ignore False-Positive VirusScan Warnings)
Hi, thanks for that. Wasn't really a joke per se; it was the observation that you concluded with, which caused the OP to enter fits. Sad, really, to see. He wasn't being "too specific"; he was mischaracterizing the operation. Oh well; perhaps he learned something.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.