Monday, January 5, 2004
Expand Beyond's Mobile Suite for Microsoft 2.3 reviewed
Posted by Philip Colmer in "SOFTWARE" @ 02:05 PM
There are many products available to assist with remote systems management, from the telnet server, Terminal Services, Internet-connected KVM devices, through to hardware built into servers themselves. The drawback to most of the products available, though, is that they (not unreasonably) reproduce the screen on the server. This can make the system unwieldy to manage through the relatively small display of the Pocket PC. What would be better would be an administration product that is tailored for use on mobile devices. Enter Expand Beyond's Mobile Suite …
Expand Beyond have a portfolio of remote management products that can be accessed through Web browsers, including customised layouts for Pocket PCs. The Mobile Suite for Microsoft contains two of those products, specifically for the Microsoft server platforms.
About This Review
I've tried several different approaches to this review, principally because the capabilities of the product are so extensive. At the end of it all, though, I've decided that I do need to explain what the product is capable of doing. To miss a feature might mean that you decide not to buy the product because you think it can't do something you want.
To that end, therefore, this is a big review. I've tried to keep the number of screenshots under control, but the review is still big.
A True Story
Friday - the entire IT Department is out enjoying a Christmas lunch together. The waxing lyrical about the Lord of the Rings is interrupted by a pager going off - software monitoring the Internet Mail Service on the Exchange 5.5 server has noticed that the service has stopped. The monitoring software had been installed because the IMS has a tendency to stop without warning and it can take a while to realise that you haven't received any email for, ooh, the last 30 seconds :wink:
Thirty minutes later and a second monitoring system pages the poor on-call person to tell him that SMTP access isn't working, confirming that the IMS has stopped running. There aren't any other alerts, so it is just that service and not the whole Exchange server.
The problem, though, is that none of us have got any means of fixing the problem whilst still in the restaurant. There was no choice but to finish the meal, drive back to the office & restart the service. If only …
Mobile Suite Overview
Expand Beyond's Mobile Suite for Microsoft consists of two products: PocketDBA and Pocket Admin. The products both work in a similar way, namely providing a secure Web interface to administrators for management of the underlying systems. The Web interface has been designed with mobile devices in mind and the server redesigns the layout of the interface according to the device you are using.
PocketDBA provides an administrator with live access to any DB2 UDB, Oracle, SQL Server or Teradata database. PocketAdmin allows an administrator to control any Windows environment, from Active Directory, Exchange and IIS through to workstations and servers, with secure command line access to any device that supports telnet. The one exception to the last item is Windows - SSH must be used for command line access to any Windows systems.
The cornerstone of the suite is the XBanywhere server. This can be installed on a Linux, Solaris or Windows server - more details can be found near the end of this review in the Specifications section. It is the XBanywhere server that you connect to with a browser. It then communicates directly with the database server (if it is PocketDBA that you are using) or a Windows gateway interface (if it is PocketAdmin you are using).
For the purposes of this review, I installed the XBanywhere server on a Windows 2003 server and the Gateway and SSH software on a Windows 2000 server. At the moment, it is not possible to install the Gateway software onto Windows 2003, but Expand Beyond are working on this.
Installation of the XBanywhere server is very straight forward - just run the installer, point it at your licence file and accept the defaults, unless you want to do things like change the port numbers used for the Web interface. Expand Beyond's documentation takes you through the prerequisities for the product. This includes thinking about how you are going to secure the communications between the Web browser & the XBanywhere server through SSL, how to control access with RSA SecurID and what ports you need to open on the firewall to permit remote browser access. It is recommended that the server itself is located in the DMZ part of your network topology.
Installing the Gateway server can be a little trickier, primarily because of the setting up that needs to be done beforehand:
Once all the software has been installed, you need to configure the XBanywhere server so that it knows which machine is the Gateway server and which databases you want to administer. This is done by pointing a browser at the XBanywhere server and entering the administrator username & password. Adding an SQL server to the list of application servers is a bit tricky and the documentation, for once, isn't entirely clear on the subject. There are quite a few bits of information that are required, as can be seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Adding a new SQL server.
The part that the documentation particularly skips is the port number to use. You can try to infer it from a SQL screenshot that the documentation contains, but it is wrong 8O The screenshot says "1108", but you actually need to use 1433. The "protocol" option is used by PocketDBA when submitting OS commands to the server. As with the Gateway server, only SSH is supported with Windows systems. If you want to administer databases on other operating systems (e.g. Oracle on Solaris), you can use telnet or SSH.
The username & password (used for verification purposes at this point) must be valid within the database environment. It is not possible to authenticate against the database server with a Windows account.
With the current release of the software, it is necessary to configure the system in advance for each separate database that you want to manage (e.g. Northwind, pubs, master, etc). If you’ve got a lot of databases on a single server, this can get a bit unwieldy, but the Web interface does remember the values you've used after you add a database, so there isn't as much to fill in when you add the next one. Expand Beyond are planning a new release in 2004 that will allow you to specify the database server and then select the database that you want to manage.
Setting up the XBanywhere server to manage Windows systems is relatively straightforward. If you want to manage a stand-alone system, all the product wants to know is an alias for the system and its hostname. If you want to manage systems within an Active Directory setup, you need a bit more information, as can be seen in Figure 2. As with SQL databases, the alias is for you to recognise the system by. The forest is the domain name of the Active Directory root and the URL is the address of the gateway server.
Figure 2: Adding a gateway server.
So, you've installed SSH, the XBanywhere server, the Gateway server, configured everything … time to start administering!
Expand Beyond have a portfolio of remote management products that can be accessed through Web browsers, including customised layouts for Pocket PCs. The Mobile Suite for Microsoft contains two of those products, specifically for the Microsoft server platforms.
About This Review
I've tried several different approaches to this review, principally because the capabilities of the product are so extensive. At the end of it all, though, I've decided that I do need to explain what the product is capable of doing. To miss a feature might mean that you decide not to buy the product because you think it can't do something you want.
To that end, therefore, this is a big review. I've tried to keep the number of screenshots under control, but the review is still big.
A True Story
Friday - the entire IT Department is out enjoying a Christmas lunch together. The waxing lyrical about the Lord of the Rings is interrupted by a pager going off - software monitoring the Internet Mail Service on the Exchange 5.5 server has noticed that the service has stopped. The monitoring software had been installed because the IMS has a tendency to stop without warning and it can take a while to realise that you haven't received any email for, ooh, the last 30 seconds :wink:
Thirty minutes later and a second monitoring system pages the poor on-call person to tell him that SMTP access isn't working, confirming that the IMS has stopped running. There aren't any other alerts, so it is just that service and not the whole Exchange server.
The problem, though, is that none of us have got any means of fixing the problem whilst still in the restaurant. There was no choice but to finish the meal, drive back to the office & restart the service. If only …
Mobile Suite Overview
Expand Beyond's Mobile Suite for Microsoft consists of two products: PocketDBA and Pocket Admin. The products both work in a similar way, namely providing a secure Web interface to administrators for management of the underlying systems. The Web interface has been designed with mobile devices in mind and the server redesigns the layout of the interface according to the device you are using.
PocketDBA provides an administrator with live access to any DB2 UDB, Oracle, SQL Server or Teradata database. PocketAdmin allows an administrator to control any Windows environment, from Active Directory, Exchange and IIS through to workstations and servers, with secure command line access to any device that supports telnet. The one exception to the last item is Windows - SSH must be used for command line access to any Windows systems.
The cornerstone of the suite is the XBanywhere server. This can be installed on a Linux, Solaris or Windows server - more details can be found near the end of this review in the Specifications section. It is the XBanywhere server that you connect to with a browser. It then communicates directly with the database server (if it is PocketDBA that you are using) or a Windows gateway interface (if it is PocketAdmin you are using).
For the purposes of this review, I installed the XBanywhere server on a Windows 2003 server and the Gateway and SSH software on a Windows 2000 server. At the moment, it is not possible to install the Gateway software onto Windows 2003, but Expand Beyond are working on this.
Installation of the XBanywhere server is very straight forward - just run the installer, point it at your licence file and accept the defaults, unless you want to do things like change the port numbers used for the Web interface. Expand Beyond's documentation takes you through the prerequisities for the product. This includes thinking about how you are going to secure the communications between the Web browser & the XBanywhere server through SSL, how to control access with RSA SecurID and what ports you need to open on the firewall to permit remote browser access. It is recommended that the server itself is located in the DMZ part of your network topology.
Installing the Gateway server can be a little trickier, primarily because of the setting up that needs to be done beforehand:
- For command-line access to the Windows servers, an SSH server needs to be installed. Expand Beyond do not provide one but do make recommendations instead;
- If you want to manage Exchange servers, the Exchange administration tools need to be installed on the Gateway server hardware before the Gateway server itself is installed.
Once all the software has been installed, you need to configure the XBanywhere server so that it knows which machine is the Gateway server and which databases you want to administer. This is done by pointing a browser at the XBanywhere server and entering the administrator username & password. Adding an SQL server to the list of application servers is a bit tricky and the documentation, for once, isn't entirely clear on the subject. There are quite a few bits of information that are required, as can be seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Adding a new SQL server.
The part that the documentation particularly skips is the port number to use. You can try to infer it from a SQL screenshot that the documentation contains, but it is wrong 8O The screenshot says "1108", but you actually need to use 1433. The "protocol" option is used by PocketDBA when submitting OS commands to the server. As with the Gateway server, only SSH is supported with Windows systems. If you want to administer databases on other operating systems (e.g. Oracle on Solaris), you can use telnet or SSH.
The username & password (used for verification purposes at this point) must be valid within the database environment. It is not possible to authenticate against the database server with a Windows account.
With the current release of the software, it is necessary to configure the system in advance for each separate database that you want to manage (e.g. Northwind, pubs, master, etc). If you’ve got a lot of databases on a single server, this can get a bit unwieldy, but the Web interface does remember the values you've used after you add a database, so there isn't as much to fill in when you add the next one. Expand Beyond are planning a new release in 2004 that will allow you to specify the database server and then select the database that you want to manage.
Setting up the XBanywhere server to manage Windows systems is relatively straightforward. If you want to manage a stand-alone system, all the product wants to know is an alias for the system and its hostname. If you want to manage systems within an Active Directory setup, you need a bit more information, as can be seen in Figure 2. As with SQL databases, the alias is for you to recognise the system by. The forest is the domain name of the Active Directory root and the URL is the address of the gateway server.
Figure 2: Adding a gateway server.
So, you've installed SSH, the XBanywhere server, the Gateway server, configured everything … time to start administering!
