Anyone use RemoteAdmin by FamaTech?

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electech98

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Looking into a reliable, inexpensive remote admin program for our corporate LAN/WAN (around 65 workstations, 12 servers). I don't care for PCAnywhere's slowness (especially over the WAN), and I'm fed up with the bugs in RemoteScope by Micro2000.

Done some searching, and came across RemoteAdmin by FamaTech. Anyone use it? Anyone like it? Is it secure? Are there better alternatives?

Thanks!
 
It is not to bad. I would say nothing really special. It is defiantly better than PC Anywhere. Still if I were to make a choice I would go with VNC.

We use it to remote connect to about 200 PC's and 60 servers.
 
OK, my coworker and I installed the demo to DameWare NT Utils, and we are very impressed so far. We'll try it out for the 30 days, and see what we'll do then.
Thanks for the suggestion!
 
You can buy just the mini remote control portion of dameware. I believe its between 50-75 bucks per machine you install it on. So if you have 3 admins only need 3 copies no matter how many clients you connect to. Plus you uninstall and reinstall the service as you use it so you dont leave yourself open like VNC which is always running. It is somewhat of a resource hog when using it though.
 
jonw757 said:
You can buy just the mini remote control portion of dameware. I believe its between 50-75 bucks per machine you install it on. So if you have 3 admins only need 3 copies no matter how many clients you connect to. Plus you uninstall and reinstall the service as you use it so you dont leave yourself open like VNC which is always running. It is somewhat of a resource hog when using it though.
Click to expand...
Actually, we're looking into the full version of DameWare NT Utilities, as both myself, my coworker, and my boss (VP of IT) are impressed with all the functions of it so far (remote control in addition to the other stuff it does).

And with 3.0GHz (with HT) / 1.5 GB RAM workstations here at work, I don't think the resource hogging will be much of an issue.
 
We use Dameware at work but I have RemoteAdmin at home. RA is a basic, cheap tool but Dameware is alot better (more options/customization). Another thing about RA is it uses alot of resources (about 30-50% cpu on the remote PC).
 
How about NETOP. We use that at work and that works pretty well. Only thing is if the server goes down then you can't get access. And there's one minor bug that I know of, when you remote into a server it turns off the caps lock on your keyboard :D
I'm not sure of the cost also.
 
Copssh + tighvnc is my usual preference and it is free. The SSH part is so easy to setup now because of Copssh. One thing though is that it will be setup as the current user and password for windows login, but you can create a special SSH login that is different from your regular windows login. Another benefit is that you can check the only allow loopback connections in VNC which disables any vnc only connections from within your LAN for added security. So if a person can't get a SSH login, they can't use VNC either. Using VNC only is just asking for trouble. I had a machine with VNC only (this was before I found out how to setup a windows based SSH server) and after about 2 months on the internet it got hacked and the machine was stuffed with a bunch of trojans and viruses. Had to format and reinstall. I haven't had any problems with machines that have an SSH server since I guess it is too much trouble for hackers to mess with.
 
I have been using Radmin for about five years now. I still use version 2.1 and it works just fine. I will agree it is not very robust, but it gets the job done very well for me.

Back in college I hooked it up to all my friends and family that wanted/needed technical support and didn't want to send their computer away or wait for me to get back to town. I have zero complaints about the software. If you are not looking for anything fancy this should do it for you. I currently run this on 40 workstations and 2 servers. It works fine for me, though I don't care for it much on the servers. I do enjoy the monitoring option on it. That has helped me catch people in a lie countless times.

Also, with that many computers if you are connecting from outside the network you will either need to have multiple ports open, which personally I find a pain or use the advanced setting and route the connection into one computer and then into the LAN. This keeps me from having to remember all the ports for each workstation.
 
I have been using RAadmin 2.1 for a few years and have noticed a few things.
- CPU overhead is a bit excessive. when using it on my duron 1.3 HTPC, while connected, I could not play compressed movie files. MP3 files were okay. On my gaming rig (mobile AMD @ 2.1GHz), with a full 64 player BF2, people noticed cpu lag only when I connected.

- Occasionally RAdmin will crash and I'd get multiple icons that'd go away when I placed the cursor over it. Not really too much of a problem, but more of a nuisance.

- What I did like was the integration into windows accounts. With an identical account on my server as my workstation, I was prompted with no user/pass boxes.
- I also like the ability to telnet/file transfer/remote access all in one program.

I ended up moving to TightVNC for the cpu issue.
 
I've used RAdmin. I works pretty well. I would have liked to see it inegrate some of the features of RDC (seamless clipboard sharing, printer sharing, etc) But, for the price, it's hard to beat. We paid ~3000 for an entire site license which wasn't bad compared to other products.
 
MorfiusX said:
I've used RAdmin. I works pretty well. I would have liked to see it inegrate some of the features of RDC (seamless clipboard sharing, printer sharing, etc) But, for the price, it's hard to beat. We paid ~3000 for an entire site license which wasn't bad compared to other products.
Click to expand...

Not sure how this will compare to your mentioned purchase, but Dameware NT Utilities is licensed $289 per technician, no limits on how many machines you control or install the remote utilities on.
 
tskiller said:
Try the standard built in to windows remote desktop. Its probably going to be the fastest one you will get, and best of all, its free!

Here is a start of some info:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mobility/getstarted/remoteintro.mspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Protocol
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, we need the remote admin software to be able to control the actual session that is already signed on at a server or workstation. Also, we still have some and Remote Desktop doesn't do this easily, if at all. Also, we still have some Windows 2000 Pro workstations that we need to control, and Remote Desktop doesn't work with Windows 2000 Pro.
 
SJConsultant said:
Not sure how this will compare to your mentioned purchase, but Dameware NT Utilities is licensed $289 per technician, no limits on how many machines you control or install the remote utilities on.
Click to expand...
One of the things we really have liked about DameWare NT Utilities is how integrated it is with Active Directory, therefore eliminating the need to manually add each of our client computers to the program.

So far, we are loving it. And the price is hard to beat, too.
 
I use VNC on our office computers (about 40 clients) and really like it. It too is free!




-Michael
 
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