Centrally Managed Remote Assistance

C

Cyberrad

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 12, 2008
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I am currently researching a Remote Assistance solution for my division and was wondering what do you guys use for Remote Assistance for your clients/employees?
 
For full monitoring I use Kaseya (Remote assistance plus a whole lot of deployment and monitoring options).

For pure remote assistance I have used
Microsoft remote assistance (yes that crappy tool built into windows was the standard for one of the enterprise clients I worked with)
Bomgar (Liked this quite a bit)
PCAnywhere
Webex
NetMeeting (Another former enterprise employer used this as their preferred tool, hated it).

Out of all of the various tools I have used Bomgar has been the best IMHO. Its platform independent, give a large range of options, and the client uninstalls itself when you are done, so nothing is left on the end user's PC (this was a big selling point for the desk I was working on and the reason we dropped webex).
 
Logmein Rescue is pretty good too, it's all similar with gotoassist and webexing.
 
Thanks for the input guys! Keep it coming.
So far in my research I have Bomgar, Webex Remote Support, and GoToAssist Corporate that all meet my requirements. GoToAssist claims it uses FIPS 140-2 guidelines for key generation but they do not specify if they have been certified compliant.

I am Gov. so I need FDCC compliance which includes FIPS 140-2. Other options I am looking into is the ability to do file transfers and ease of use for our challenged (read difficult) users.

A co-worker of mine told me about Altiris by Symantec but their site isn't making sense to me (sales BS no facts). It looks like this product does a little too much for us.

I checked out LogMeIn Rescue but it doesn't look like it is FIPS 140-2. Because of the way we are set up the Remote Assistance from Microsoft will not work.
 
We use Dameware on our corp network, works with folks over VPN connections fairly good.
 
We just deployed Kaseya across 4 sites as well as MS AD. I also fancy me some Dameware, it also works great in an AD environment. :)
 
well i've used dameware and currently use altiris for remote control in corporate envrionments.
i'd have to give it to dameware, i think it runs a little lighter -more reliable better diagnostics for failures etc. both still install clients, however.
 
On another note, Dameware is licensed "per admin" not "per client/node." Which is very very cost effective for sure. $289 for Dameware NTU and $90 for Dameware MRC is damn cheap for what it does. The single license also allows for installation on your desktop and laptop from what I understand as well. So score another one for Dameware's cost. You can then manage an unlimited number of systems with it. Again I urge people to only use with an AD environment. It will work without it, but AD just makes it sexy.
 
LogMeIn costs a lot, although there's a lot you can do in terms of remote management that I haven't seen from any other big remote assistance/meeting players.

TeamViewer is a one-time fee as opposed to being a subscription-based model, and you will get significantly more out of it than GoToAssist with better overall compatibility (I've seen GoToAssist fail where TeamViewer didn't).

The only time I've seen TeamViewer have issues is on Windows XP Embedded, specialized systems, or if the user doesn't have internet connectivity.

Get a Corporate license, it's totally worth it. You can put a customized QuickSupport EXE with a preconfigured password (if you wish) at \\domain.com\netlogon and have a GPO push out a Desktop shortcut "IT Remote Support" that launches that. For laptops, you can do a customized TeamViewer Host install which would also run as a service. TeamViewer IDs are based on machine configuration so for desktop PCs and laptops the TeamViewer ID# super-seldom changes. You can record this TeamViewer ID# in the asset's inventory information.

Not only would you get remote support abilities with TeamViewer, but you would also have access to its Meeting functionality (same stuff GoToMeeting and others provide). It's Meeting functionality is pretty rock solid and top of game. The one big difference that I see regarding TeamViewer Meeting is that the phone conferencing feature where you dial in a number on your phone = not free, but you can use webcams/microphones/headphones on the computer to do that stuff OR find a service dedicated to just providing a phone based conference service (would still be cheaper doing this since TeamViewer is not a subscription-model).

When new major releases of TeamViewer come out, you are not required to update (which would require you to pay an update fee). Your license to TeamViewer version X is perpetual.

http://www.teamviewer.com/en/licensing/index.aspx

If you go with TeamViewer, you won't regret it.

Also, not knowing your environment, consider free possibilities such as "Remote Desktops" by Microsoft. According to my co-worker the specialty of this software is that it will let you login simultaneously to the same machine as the user via RDP without booting them off, and then allow you to use Task Manager --> Users --> right-click on user --> remote control to shadow their session while they are using the machine. For clarification, this isn't true if you use mstsc or Remote Desktop Connection Manager.

There are some other names in this thread that I want to look into simply because I've never heard of them before and want to keep my mind open. :) Bomgar, R-HUB, Dameware, Kaseya (ok I have been introduced to this and I hated it, personal preference), PCAnywhere, Webex, NetMeeting, join.me (another product by LogMeIn)
 
Using Dameware here at my new job, some machines I still RDP into, but I like the program.
 
Been using Logmein for years, I don't use it as much as I used to. Been using teamviewer which I like. I'd like to find something like Bomgar that is hosted on-premise. Most of my boxes are in network so I generally RDP to them.
 
Logmein Rescue is nice.


-Create a session
-Have user to go http://123rescuse.com
-User puts in a PIN provided by you
-Downloads an app
-You can control everything, run scripts, control cell phones, its nice


edit: it only sucks if you don;t have local admin rights to the machine and the machine you remote into has UAC turned on, Logmein will lock you out if UAC prompts.
 
Ehren8879 said:
I've been very happy with Screenconnect
Click to expand...

Third! Not quite as fleshed out for supporting remote devices as Teamviewer, but control from remote devices works well. I find that it's much easier to work with and the persistent connection is handy.

sc0tty8 said:
Been using Logmein for years, I don't use it as much as I used to. Been using teamviewer which I like. I'd like to find something like Bomgar that is hosted on-premise. Most of my boxes are in network so I generally RDP to them.
Click to expand...
Scotty8, Take a look at Screenconnect.
 
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I'll check it out. On the surface seems like a bargain compared to LMI, I think they got me $480 or $625 last year.
 
Logmein Rescue. Has two factor authentication which is required (starting to be slowly enforced) in the industry I'm in.
 
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