Since the system admin job involves a lot of activities, there are many tools that help them with this. Typically, these tools are used for monitoring, backups, resource allocation, user and account management, ensuring security, software installation and updates, performance tuning, and so on.
The world as we see it today is a connected one, and it's heavily dependent on systems for all everyday functions. The huge dependency on computer systems also brought about the need to ensure that these systems keep running smoothly, and efficiently. Maintenance of these systems for ensuring their health, performance, optimization and better resource utilization, etc. lies on the shoulders of system administrators. Since this would typically mean a 24*7 job wherein multiple parameters of the system would have to be monitored, system administrators turn to tools that aid them in this. That brought about the emergence of system admin tools.
Since the system admin job involves a lot of activities, there are many tools that help them with this. Typically, these tools are used for monitoring, backups, resource allocation, user and account management, ensuring security, software installation and updates, performance tuning, and so on. At times, the system admin role may also overlap with that of a DevOps role in certain organizations. Hence, the various system admin tools available, that span across all the categories mentioned above. Here is a list of a few tools that are part of a system admin’s kitty.
A remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool that helps automate most of the repetitive tasks, Pulseway enables system admins to manage all their IT systems from anywhere. The interface is simple to use and also integrates many business needs into it like Cloud backup, business management, monitoring, endpoint protection, and more. Incredibly, it comes with a mobile app that can be used from any time, anywhere, making the job easier for system admins.
Pulseway allows system admins to do more work, by automating tasks like deployment, backups, reports, patching, and so on. With more than 6000 happy customers across 80 countries, Pulseway is best suited for businesses that want to do more for their customers, using efficient tools.
JumpCloud securely manages and connects your users to their systems, applications, files, and networks. These systems could be Windows, Mac, or Linux, and with a diverse array of supported protocols, any app or resource can be integrated and centrally controlled, irrespective of its location. It is a cloud-based service that makes it easier to adapt and enables users to become more productive, by better leveraging cloud resources. It helps with user, system, and server and access management through a single sign-on with multi-factor authentication. Its tagline happens to be ‘Directory-as-a-Service® is Active Directory® and LDAP reimagined’.
Almost on every system admin’s list for quite some time, Wireshark is a multi-platform network protocol analyzer that provides a microscopic level of inputs. It allows live capture as well as offline analysis, and the captured data can be browsed via a GUI, or via the TTY-mode TShark utility. It can capture many file formats and provides decryption support for many protocols as well. What makes it more interesting is that it is open-source (released under the terms of the GNU General Public License), with a huge community and a lot of documentation and training support for its users.
It is a simple, yet powerful automation solution, that helps many organizations to improve productivity by reducing complexity, reducing errors, and improved collaboration. Ansible increases accountability and compliance at the organization level and frees up more resources for innovation. System admins are free of repetitive tasks by automating them and can focus more on improving the health, efficiency, and performance of the systems.
It is also easy to learn and use, and helps with tasks like app deployment, configuration management, workflow orchestration, and more. It is also open-source and reliable and secure, with more than a quarter-million downloads per month. It comes with powerful modules like the visual dashboard, audit trails, centralized automation execution, role-based access control, and a lot more features that can improve speed, scale, and stability across the enterprise IT environment.
The solutions from Puppet help automate, how you continuously deliver, make compliant, remediate, and manage your multi-cloud environment. It is open-source and its IT management solution makes managing a global infrastructure safe and simple. It provides a single platform for all your cloud automation use cases, with a single audit trail. Puppet solutions power automation of some of the biggest brands in the world, and have a great community, knowledge-base, and support documentation.
A modern monitoring tool that helps a system admins see it all in one place - servers, clouds, metrics, apps, and the team. It seamlessly integrates SaaS and Cloud providers, automation tools, monitoring and instrumentation, source control and bug tracking, databases and server components, and more. It provides full visibility to monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize application performances. It also helps you to proactively monitor user experience, analyze and explore data logs, and build interactive, real-time dashboards for a better and easier understanding of the environment.
An open-source, password manager tool meant primarily for Windows, though it supports Mac and Linux through Mono. It helps manage multiple passwords in one database, locked securely using a master key. It supports the highest level of encryptions like AES and Twofish and is easily portable and the password list can be exported to or imported from multiple file formats. It provides multi-language support and can even generate random passwords, besides allowing for search and sort operations.
A free and powerful, source code editor, Notepad++, meant specifically for windows OS. It can edit multiple files using the tab feature, with syntax highlighting for over 70 languages. And it has a fast response time, despite working with large files, making it extremely useful for system admins working on large logs to look for something. It also supports macros and bookmarks, as well as advanced search and replaces. Drag and drop, zoom in and out, auto-completion, brace and indent guideline highlighting, and line operations are some of the other features that make it a powerful source code editor.
A partition and disk imaging tool that also allows for backup, recovery, and deployment, Clonezilla, supports multiple file systems. An image can be encrypted (AES-256) and also restored to multiple devices. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 2 and has versions for a single server as well as large server deployments. It is fast and allows OS installation as well as taking snapshots and then deploying the same over a network.
FileCloud provides features for easy business file sharing with complete control over business data. Whether you are sharing sensitive documents, large files, legal or medical data, FileCloud gives you a secure document sharing solution. FileCloud offers efficient and reliable data backup. FileCloud provides you with appropriate tools to protect data across all devices. Get auto Desktop and mobile backup, Unlimited File Versioning, and deleted files recovery. Secure backup and restore across all platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux) and devices (desktops, laptops, and smartphones) Granular permissions should allow you to give each user the access rights you want them to have — Write, read-only, restricted access, etc FileCloud also gives you the option to password protect your files, set an expiry date and has File change notification options.
