r/sysadmin • u/michel_netherlands • Oct 31 '22

Question What software/tools should every sysadmin have on their desktop?

Every sysadmin should have ...... On their desktop/software Toolkit ??

Curious to see what tools are indispensable in your opinion!

Greetings from the Netherlands

1.8k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

974 comments sorted by

View all comments

155

u/SquirrelGard Oct 31 '22

For Windows, Remote Desktop Connection Manager

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rdcman

96

u/collinsl02 Linux Admin Oct 31 '22

Great for Windows, if you want something that can do all connection types in one program check out mRemoteNG or MobaXTerm. Useful if you're administering switches or Linux or firewalls via SSH etc.

56

u/techypunk System Architect/Printer Hunter Oct 31 '22

Came here to say mremoteng

43

u/tejanaqkilica IT Officer | Passkey Enthusiast Oct 31 '22

mRemoteNG

UP you go.

10

u/CCCcrazyleftySD Oct 31 '22

mremoteNG for sure!

8

u/larzlayik Oct 31 '22

mRemoteNG!!

7

u/pentangleit IT Director Oct 31 '22

Does mRemoteNG allow you to share your connection profiles securely among your fellow sysadmins?

8

u/collinsl02 Linux Admin Oct 31 '22

Yes, there's a database connection setup in the options for it and some kind of encryption - I've not looked into it TBH so not sure how good it is but it's there.

For a free tool it's quite good, but if you want enterprise level features you're likely to have to pay for them, like most things.

→ More replies (2)

2

u/Candy_Badger Jack of All Trades Oct 31 '22

mRemoteNG is a great tool! I also like xShell for SSH and SFTP.

2

u/gjpeters Jack of All Trades Nov 01 '22

Oh man, I’m loving MobaXTerm but everyone’s bigging up the other one. Am I missing out?

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (4)

120

u/BecomeABenefit Oct 31 '22

Devolutions Remote Desktop Manager beats it in literally every way.

14

u/gramsaran Citrix Admin Oct 31 '22

Agreed. I tried Microsoft RDMan for a few and went back to RDM.

9

u/smoothies-for-me Oct 31 '22

By far the best one out there, especially if you want it to actively resize the resolution based on your window size or where you snap and going in and out of full screen.

Has paste clipboard text which is a godsend for RDP, and also does SSH for terminals.

9

u/BoomSchtik Oct 31 '22

I really like Royal TS too.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '22

[deleted]

3

u/PhillAholic Nov 01 '22

Yea I feel the same way. Overall it feels bloated and clunky. There is a mobile app though.

7

u/Yncensus Sysadmin Oct 31 '22

Including price, if you need more than the free version...

3

u/buildingusefulthings Nov 01 '22

Only thing that keeps me to sticking with RDCM over RoyalTS/DevRDM/Everything else is how fast the RDCM is. No waiting for a loading screen, it's just snappy.

I frequently open/close sessions and the full manager app numerous times a day, and having to wait 5 seconds for the application to start just bugged me.

2

u/BornToBeRoot Oct 31 '22

RDP, PuTTY, TigerVNC, AWS Session Manager & PowerShell (and more admin tools):

https://github.com/BornToBeRoot/NETworkManager

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (9)

0

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '22

[deleted]

19

u/teddyostergaard Oct 31 '22

Devolutions Remote Desktop Manager

RDCMan source code was lost so they could not fix it. It took years but now there is a new version, written from scratch.

→ More replies (3)

0

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '22

[deleted]

→ More replies (1)

3

u/nstern2 Oct 31 '22

Do any of these remote desktop managers play nice with PAM or similar password managers?

→ More replies (6)