Remote Desktop Access and Control

The Bomgar Box

If you run a help desk then you either currently use or have tried in the past the GoToAssist hosted service from Citrix. A very good hosted solution and it saves you the trouble of having to run it on your network. But what if you WANT to host your own remote desktop control solution? Enter The Bomgar Box, an appliance-based remote control solution from Bomgar. Bomgar is the brainchild of co-founder Joel Bomgar and began life as Network Streaming and later changed the company name. My good buddy Troy recently went to work over there and turned me on to their solution. Some of the features and benefits from the Bomgar site are listed below:

Features

Bomgar™ enables clientless connection to any Windows, Linux, Mac, or Windows Mobile system by creating a remote desktop connection from your system and the end user's systems to the Bomgar Box outbound through firewalls.

Support Across Platforms

• Gain remote desktop control of Windows, Mac, Linux and Windows Mobile
• Support via screen sharing or command line interface
• Gain virtual control of unattended systems with Jump Technology
• Localize in Italian, Japanese, German, Spanish and French

Provide Fast, Effective Support

• Start a remote desktop connection to multiple systems simultaneously
• Automatically pull system info for quick diagnosis
• Reboot computers & re-initiate the connection automatically
• Transfer files & chat with customers or other reps securely
• Present your screen for training purposes

Integrate with Existing Applications

• Open API
• Create plug-ins with Bomgar's SDK
• Integrate with BMC® Remedy® Service Desk
• LDAP and RADIUS integration
• Customize Bomgar's customer-facing elements

Keep Your Data Secure

• On-site, appliance-based deployment
• Every remote desktop connection protected with 256-bit AES SSL encryption
• Logs and video recordings of virtual support sessions
• Granular management of support rep privileges
• Set group policies for managing permissions

Get the Box That's Right for You

• Scalable deployment models
Bomgar B100 – 1 support rep
Bomgar B200 – 2 to 20 support reps
Bomgar B300 – Up to 300 support reps
Multiple B300s for larger deployments
• Concurrent licensing & unlimited software user accounts

Centralize Support Management

• Define support teams and support request queues
• Create custom exit surveys to monitor rep performance
• Analyze trends with detailed service desk reports
• Authenticate support reps with single sign-on

Another positive to the Bomgar Box is the cost. Whereas hosted solutions like GoToAssist and Webex charge per-use fees for their service, the Bomgar appliance is a one time cost with only a yearly maintenance and support fee after that. If your organization requires a great deal of remote connectivity to end users, you could save a bundle by going to the Bomgar appliance. As always, check it out and let me know what you think.

Linux integration to MS Active Directory

Using Vintela from Quest Software

Many moons ago I was fortunate enough to stumble upon Vintela Authentication Services (although I don't think it was called that back then). Vintela is now a part of Quest Software and has expanded their product offerings, but the core VAS is still a great solution. What does it do you ask. Well, it makes a Unix, Linux or Mac system become a part of a Microsoft Active Directory domain, enabling centralized authentication and access control. You can then extend the benefits of Windows Group Policies to those non-Windows systems.

For an organization that has a majority of Microsoft Windows-based server operating systems, using Vintela VAS on those non-Windows servers saves the headaches of managing separate NIS or LDAP servers. You then get a centralized place for storing (and managing) user names, passwords, access rights, and more with no need for setup of an LDAP gateway. So, that Mac user over in marketing can now be managed via AD, as well as those new Linux boxes that keep finding their way into the datacenter.

While I'm on this subject, I've run across several instances lately where an application vendor wanted to store access control privileges in Active Directory to fields in the application database, which meant modifying the AD schema to fit a specific application. Well, Microsoft has a great way to overcome this by using Microsoft Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) which can run on the application server or an XP PC and doesn't require a domain controller. I'll write a longer post about this later, but keep it in mind if you have legacy LDAP or X.500 integration needs or an application-specific security schema. ADAM integrates and replicates with AD, sometimes requiring MS Identity Integration Server 2003, but not always.

If you have a majority of Windows-based servers with an Active Directory domain and group policies, then check out Vintela for bringing those non-Windows boxes into AD.

SizeExplorer Pro

SizeExplorer Pro helps clean up your disk drive(s)

So what the heck is eating up all of the 60GB disk drive in your laptop, or for that matter why are you out of disk space on the file server again after adding 1TB of disk space to it. One way to find out is by spending $49 bucks for SizeExplorer Pro Bundle. A very useful tool, this software will crawl your hard disk and create a sortable report of all of the files on your drive. You can then sort by size, type, date, etc. and find all those ISO images you forgot you had out there when you were playing around with the latest Ubuntu release. Also included is a utility to identify duplicate files, and the ability to export the results to an Excel spreadsheet for more data sorting and crunching. You can download the free version and try it out for 21 days before you have to purchase a license key.

Here's a list of the new features in version 4.1:

* New Duplicates finder tool
* New Compare of saved explorations tool
* New look and Skinned interface (over 160 skins available)
* Add Levels of folders option in File Lister
* New tool to calculate MD5 hash or CRC32 checksum
* New Column:
o % of Parent
o Size On Disk
o Wasted Space
o % Wasted Space
o Allocation Unit
o Saved Space by Compression
o Compression Ratio
o MD5 hash
o CRC32 Checksum
* New split mode in Analyzer (chart and report at same time)
* Now support append of data in Export for some file format
* Better Vista support
* Add support for compressed and sparse files
* Faster listview and File Lister
* Display % column as graphic
* Add "Open Command Prompt from here" feature
* Add 8 new size reports in Analyzer
* Can now customize reference date for date report
* Speed up Analyzer reports creation
* Better look for Analyzer reports
* Load of exploration file (.sef) now possible in SizeExplorer Pro itself
* Multi-language support ready (languages available in version 4.2)

VMware ESX 3.5

VMware's new version 3.5 ROCKS

Ok, so I've had several customers recently install and/or upgrade to VMware's ESX version 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 and I've got to say, VMware is still the king of the hill when it comes to x86 virtualization. VMware has raised the bar once again with ESX 3.5 by giving per-server RAM scalability to 256GB, per VM support of up to 64GB RAM and support for up to 32 logical processors per ESX server. Other new features include support for 64-bit guest operating systems, SATA disk drives, 10GB Ethernet, N_port ID Virtualization for Fiber Channel cards (so each VM can have it's own Worldwide Port Name (WWPN)), support for Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) and even support for IPv6 among others. Also enhanced in v3.5 is better intra-virtual machine support for Citrix Presentation Server, allowing greater scalability. VMotion has several enhancements as well and VMotion continues set VMware apart from competitors in terms of enterprise-class scalability and high availability.

In a couple of recent installs customers have taken advantage of IBM's x3650 architecture giving 12 DIMM slots and (2) CPU slots, loading these boxes up with 48GB RAM and (2) Quad-core CPUs. One customer even tested failover by running 34 production VMs on a single x3650 for nearly four days with no help desk calls and no user complaints. Also, I've seen great performance from several different types of external storage arrays including iSCSI-connected storage, fibre channel attached storage with SAS drives (and SATA for storage VMware snapshots) and even NFS-mounted disk volumes. It all boils down to I/O requirements and don't underestimate the performance characteristics of some of the newest storage arrays.

One consistent third party application that is a hands-down requirement if you're implementing VMware is Vizioncore's vRangerPro for efficient backup and recovery of your VMware virtual machines, and if you want to replicate your VM's to an offsite location look no further than Vizioncore's vReplicator.

I also get asked all the time, "So, is anyone running 'X' in a VM yet", where X is a whole host of applications. Not everything is a great candidate for virtualization, and typically CPU utilization and I/O are the two limiting factors, but yes, I've seen production instances of Oracle DB, MS SQL, MS Exchange, MS Terminal Services and even Citrix running in actual customer production environments.

Another topic that needs to be considered is virtual desktops which deserves a post of its own, but worth mentioning here. I have several LARGE customers and small ones as well taking a dual-CPU box with quad-core cpus, loading it up with RAM, installing VMware and then loading up to 64 instances of Windows XP Pro and/or Vista Business, giving end users thin client devices or letting them run desktop applications from a central location while keeping their local PC. Connectivity is accomplished via RDP which is native in XP and Vista. It's even better when you take advantage of Microsoft's Softgrid or VMware's Thinstall for application streaming and virtualization.

For more information see the VMware Blog and Release Notes.