Download A Single Interface Remote Administration Tool

1. Statement of Problem Area
Remote administration refers to any method of controlling a computer from a remote
location. Remote administration is becoming increasingly common and is often used
when it is difficult or impractical to be physically near a system in order to use it, or in
order to access web material that is not available in one's location. Any computer with
an Internet connection, TCP/IP or on a Local Area Network (LAN) can be remotely
administered. Remote administration can be used for any cluster of activities and can
span multiple categories of servers, such as database servers, middleware servers, etc.
In general, a middleware is an interface that mediates between the application
programs and the computing system. The application programs are often referred to as
users or clients requesting services and the computing system is the entity providing the
services. In an analogy, this is similar to client/server systems where the middleware
acts as glue or the conduit to provide communication between the clients and the
server. Middleware is also similar to the middle layer of three-tier single system
architecture, except that it is stretched across multiple systems or applications. Some
examples of middleware server technologies are JBoss and IBM Websphere.
With many administrators in the IT world, each one may have different needs and daily
tasks. There may be some tasks that an administrator has to repeat daily on a frequent
basis – this becomes a time consuming and unproductive activity. To quote as an
example, a server administrator might need to start and stop the JBoss servers several
times a day. If there were one or two servers, then this would be a simple task. What if
there were a number of servers, like 30 or 40 servers that need to be started at different
times? Connecting to each of these disparate boxes1 individually and performing similar
type of administrative activities repetitively are very time consuming and reduce a
person’s and thereby a firm’s productivity significantly.
There exist many tools in the market with the capability of remotely administrating
tasks on these servers. These cheap and inexpensive tools help a middleware
administrator with day to day work by logging into separate interfaces in order to
complete the tasks needed. The tools can constantly monitor these machines and
servers and report any problem if they see any suspicious activity through email or
through an interface. However, these tools are often not able to retain the specific
settings required to redo the same or the modified forms of the routine administrative
tasks. Specially, these tools do not have a single, unified user interface to manage the
entire IT administrative works, including
controlling the development, QA and
Production environments.
1
A box is often referred to as a host, server, or in general a system.
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