Many products offer a variety of useful remote control tools
Many modern competitive Windows NT Server applications, such as Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and Microsoft SQL Server, include standard remote-administration tools. From an administrative support standpoint, if you use these tools, you might never need to revisit a server after you set up your system. But many tasks, such as installing a printer or changing driver settings, require you to locally log on to the server console. Some applications simply don't provide remote-administration capabilities, and you must log on to the server locally to install any program that lacks an unattended (or silent) install option. In some cases, the client console is more difficult to use than the server console or has a user interface (UI) that is less rich than the server's interface. Or you might need to remotely log on to a dedicated or colocated server at a Web hosting service. In all these circumstances, you can use remote control software to control the server from a client just as if you were logged on to the server locally. Remote control software links client and server: From the client, you see a window containing the server's UI, and you can send commands and keystroke combinations directly to the server.
The Players
I compared 10 remote control solutions from an NT Server 4.0 remote-administration perspective. I tested product features that relate to server administration and management, although most of the products' designs and marketing clearly concentrate on remote support (i.e., Help desk functionality) and training.
At first, I thought that NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition (WTS) would be a strong alternative to these products, but WTS runs on a separate kernel with a separate set of service packs and patches and is overall an expensive way to run a system. WTS also has no potential as a Help desk solution. Windows 2000 Server Terminal Services might offer more remote control functionality than WTS, at least when the client and server are on the same domain. All versions of Windows 2000 Server (Win2K Server) come with at least a two-user (administration-mode only) license for Terminal Services. Although Terminal Services lessens the need to use third-party remote control products for administrative purposes, it can't replace these products' Help desk functionality because the server part of Terminal Services runs only on Win2K Server, not on Windows 2000 Professional (Win2K Pro).
An important market for these products is remote administration of dedicated and colocated servers at Web hosting services. Such a server's console is usually inconvenient to access locally, and remote control is the typical solution. I surveyed six participants from Windows 2000 Magazine's recent review of NT Web hosting services (see "NT Web Hosting Services," September 1999) and asked these companies how they enable remote administrative access to dedicated and colocated servers. Four of the services use Symantec's pcAnywhere (although two of these four let customers run a different program if they choose), one service makes no recommendation (customers decide which product to use), and one service uses a home-built administration console. (When I administered dedicated servers at a large national hosting service, I used Remotely Possible, which is now Computer Associates'—CA's—ControlIT.) When you remotely administer a dedicated Web server, you probably connect over the Internet, which can open a hole in your firewall. Most of the products in this review support direct-modem or ISDN connections, which might be more secure alternatives. Some of the products, including LapLink.com's LapLink 2000, support direct cable connections (e.g., USB), although such connections probably aren't practical solutions for a server. Several products support only TCP/IP as a network protocol, but some products also support IPX and NetBIOS.
All the programs (except Famatech's Remote Administrator—RAdmin—1.11) have text chat and file transfer modes. The text chat function, which isn't particularly useful in remote server administration, is a good example of a feature that targets Help desk functionality. (Many of the products also have a voice chat function, which generally isn't useful even for Help desks—few people have a networked computer but not a telephone.) But file transfer is a useful remote-administration tool, even when you can copy files across the network using Windows Explorer. All the file transfer programs I tested had a classic two-pane design (with the client and server systems set up for easy copying), which I find more convenient than Windows Explorer (in which you have to find the systems by searching through Network Neighborhood). File transfer also lets you use remote control to transfer a file even when a drive or folder isn't explicitly shared on the network. And if the server is at an ISP, you need file transfer because you don't log on to the domain and thus can't copy files over the LAN.
Most of the products also support remote printing, which lets you define a client-side printer as the target printer for programs running on the server. This service lets you print a file locally without having to transfer it first. If you don't have a client-side application that can read or print your data, this convenient service can be a necessity.
Two of the products (i.e., CrossTec's NetOp 6.0, and NetSupport Manager 5.0) even let you control your system through a Web browser. (Although pcAnywhere has an ActiveX control version, the version resides in pcAnywhere's Unsupported directory, and the product doesn't install this version by default or mention it in the documentation.) The products use a special browser plugin or ActiveX control. With the latter, you can administer the server from any client that runs Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 3.0 or later and that has network access to the server.
Some administrative tasks, such as clearing out temporary directories, are repetitive. Many of the reviewed products have scripting languages that let you automate such tasks. If you want to get fancy, you can define one command to connect to the server, log on, perform the task, log off, and disconnect. You can set a task in combination with NT's or the product's scheduler to occur at a convenient time—for example, in the middle of the night when the server's load is lightest.
You can run all the products as NT services and let the service answer connections even when no users are logged on. This option is essential for remote administration. Many of the products don't enable NT service by default, so you must be sure that you properly configure the server. Some of the products also require a separate setting that tells the server to accept connections; unfortunately, only a few of the products let you configure this setting during installation.
The products I reviewed have different ways of handling special keystroke combinations, such as Ctrl+Esc and Alt+Tab. (I liked ControlIT's method, which creates a special menu option for selecting these keystrokes.) Some products translate the keystrokes into strange equivalents (such as Alt+Right Arrow for Alt+Tab) or send all such keystrokes to the remote (server) application, making them less convenient for local (client) use.
Two vendors were unable to participate in this review. New versions of Compaq's Carbon Copy 32 (http://www.compaq.com) and Binary Research International's RemotelyAnywhere (http://www.binaryresearch.net) were in the development stage and not yet available for testing. If you need to make a purchase decision, you might want to check with these vendors to see whether their products are available.
The Process
To test these products, I used a dual-processor Compaq system with 192MB of RAM running NT Server 4.0 with Service Pack 5 (SP5). My client was a Micron P166 system with 96MB of RAM running NT Workstation 4.0 with SP5. The systems connected over 10Mbps Ethernet.
No standard terminology for remote control operation systems exists among the vendors. Windows 2000 Magazine refers to the remote control server as the server and the controlling client system as the client, but don't be surprised to see other terms (e.g., host instead of server, viewer instead of client) in product documentation.
In testing the products, I found that setting the server's screen resolution to be lower than the client's resolution let me view a full server screen inside a client window. Many of the products let you scale the image's resolution to the window's size, but this scaling looked odd. Keeping resolution and color depth low also can improve performance. Although I didn't test performance specifically, I perceived that some products were particularly fast or slow, and I mention these perceptions in the reviews.
The Verdict
I tested many good products for this review. To compare product features, see Table 1 online on Windows 2000 Magazine's Web site at http://www.win2000mag.com/articles, InstantDoc ID 8463. Although some products, such as Artisoft's CoSession 2000, had obvious problems, I can't single out one product as being clearly better than the others. Even RAdmin, which has limited capabilities, might be adequate for your purposes—and at $25 for a two-PC license, you have plenty of reason to try it. As I mentioned, all the products are also designed for training and Help desk functions. More significant, some of the products might integrate into another part of your network infrastructure, such as management software (e.g., if you're a CA Unicenter shop, you'd probably be better off with ControlIT).
Whichever remote control product you use, remember to be strict about security. These products expose powerful functionality that can give an intruder free and easy reign over your network.