Review - Mobile Admin - Handheld Server Management

Posted by: PatrickJ on Oct 22 2006 - 1,982 views

These days, in companies large and small, and across just about all industries, we rely on technology to do our jobs.  We rely on servers and networks to keep us working productively every day.

For network managers, the ability to respond quickly to a problem or request is critical. More often that not, downtime costs money and server slowdowns are a crisis. Whether it’s reacting to a server slowdown, resetting a user’s password, or fixing just about any server issue - speed is almost always of the essence.

Idokorro Mobile Admin is a tool that promises to increase your ability to respond quickly to server issues and reduce costly downtime - by allowing you to manage your servers from a handheld device - anywhere, anytime, as long as you’ve got an internet connection. 

I’ve been testing the latest Windows Mobile version of Mobile Admin on a small network on three critical servers, with two handheld devices - a Dell Axim X51V and a Cingular 8125 (HTC Wizard) - and looking at whether this is really a useful addition to a network admin’s toolkit.

Read on for a walk-through of how Mobile Admin works - and a chance to win a free copy of this software …

 

Mobile Admin - Background

Idokorro Mobile Admin is made by Idokorro (pronounced "ee-dough-ko-row", and meaning ‘whereabouts’ in Japanese). It allows you to manage a range of servers and essential server services that includes: MS Windows servers, Active Directory, Exchange, DHCP, DNS, IIS, SQL Server, Lotus Domino, Novell, Blackberry Enterprise Servers, Oracle, Citrix, RSA Authentication Manager, HP’s iLO, and Veritas (Symantec) Backup Exec.

It can be run on a broad range of mobile devices - including: Blackberry devices, Palm devices (including Treo), Windows Mobile (Pocket PC and Smartphone) devices, Nokia Series 60 and 80 phones, and more.

It supports and encourages secure connections to your network - https, VPN clients, and even RSA SecurID two-factor authentication.

Idokorro also offers a suite of products that are all about allowing you to manage your network from anywhere. Their other products include Mobile SSH, for managing routers, firewalls, and Unix and Linux servers.

Installation & Configuration

Installation on both the server end and the mobile device is very straightforward. One of the first things that will immediately impress you about Mobile Admin is that there is plenty of good documentation. There’s a server guide, a client guide, install instructions for the various different mobile device types supported, and a security whitepaper.

Server Installation & Configuration: On the network end of things, you only need to install Mobile Admin on one server. It does not require agent software to be deployed to other managed servers. The server install is wizard-based and there’s not much to do except choose your install path and provide your trial serial number.

The trial version is a full 30 days, and generously allows you to manage up to 50 servers.

Once Mobile Admin is installed, you use its small management console to setup things like which servers are managed by it, the port used by the mobile admin service, whether to use https, and which users can access it, as well as authentication methods for those users - and you can choose to use Windows-Integrated, LDAP-based, RSA SecurID, or separate Mobile Admin credentials.

Mobile Admin offers the option of adding HTTPS encryption to all data sent between the Mobile Admin Server and Mobile Admin Clients. This option is highly recommended for Palm, Pocket PC, Smartphone, Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Ericssson users who decide to use Mobile Admin without a VPN.

If you’re not using a VPN, you will also need to setup appropriate firewall rules to allow access to your Mobile Admin server on its default service port (or the one you’ve assigned to it).

Mobile Device Installation: On a Windows Mobile device, the .NET Compact Framework is required. Once that’s present, installation is simple and as expected on a Windows Mobile 5 device - and you can run it via a desktop .exe file or a .cab file.

The mobile client application is fairly compact - taking up less than 300k.

There’s very little to configure at the client end in order to get going. When you launch the program, you simply provide a server name or IP address to connect to and the appropriate login credentials (according to the authentication methods you’ve setup on the server side).

Usage - What Can You Do With Mobile Admin?

Now for the fun part. What can you do with Mobile Admin once you’ve got it setup?

The short answer is that you can do just about all common and critical tasks with Mobile Admin. Once you connect to your Mobile Admin server on your mobile device, you’re presented with a list of all the servers you’ve chosen to manage with it.

You just select one of those servers and that takes you to a screen with a set of icons representing all the management consoles that are relevant to that server’s roles and services (SQL Enterprise Manager if it’s a SQL Server, Exchange System Manager if it’s an Exchange server and so on).

So, for example, if Backup Exec is running on a server you can manage backup jobs and settings:

If you’re looking at a domain controller, you can work with Active Directory users and groups:

 

The screenshots above demonstrate a few of the strengths of the design of Mobile Admin. All of its views are laid out well and optimized for small handheld screens, it makes use of the Soft Keys, and the Options menu gives you choices that are specific to which management console you’re in.  It’s D-pad aware and one-handed use is easy with Mobile Admin. In the above example, I don’t need a stylus at all and can happily reset Barry Bonds’ password, or better yet disable his account, with just one hand and the D-pad.

On a file server, you can work with shares and permissions:

For servers that provide DNS, DHCP, Print, IIS, Exchange, SQL and other essential services, you just click the icon for any of those and then work with common tasks that relate specifically to those services.

In addition to the role-based icons, there are a good number of constant icons that correspond to common and essential management activities across all different types of servers - like restarting the server, using ping, nslookup, or traceroute commands, opening a command prompt, looking at event logs or all server services and their current state, or viewing Task Manager’s performance tab or all running processes.

 

Performance

Mobile Admin has run solidly (i.e. without hanging or crashing) and quickly for me on both a Dell Axim X51V and a Cingular 8125.  It even works quickly over the 8125’s GPRS connection. It has run happily while several other applications are running on both devices and has never caused any general slowdown in switching between programs or on general performance.

Some of you may be wondering why you would want to use Mobile Admin instead of just using the built-in Terminal Services client, or a VNC app, on a Windows Mobile device.

Well, Mobile Admin is designed from the ground up for working on common server management tasks on a small screen - its optimized views and menus mean that you can do things much more quickly! I can do most things one-handed, with very little need for scrolling in order to see what I need to see, and zip between different management screens and tasks with a minimum of effort.

Data Usage - I have not used any data monitoring apps while testing Mobile Admin. Idokorro does provide some useful information on Mobile Admin’s data usage on their Product FAQ page though - here’s a quick excerpt from there: Data bandwidth depends on how much your typical administrator uses their wireless handheld.For example, loading a list of Processes with Mobile Admin typically uses 3 KB. Each time you reload the list of Processes you should see this amount of data used. Mobile Admin uses a sophisticated caching system that allows the client application to cache data and only request new data when it is known to have changed and requires refreshing.

Server side performance has also been very good. Mobile Admin does not require a dedicated server and does not cause any major resource hit on the server it  runs on.

Conclusions

Mobile Admin has some striking good points that hit you immediately - starting with the fact that it offers a full 30-day trial that allows for managing up to 50 servers and really allows you to put it through its paces before making a purchase decision.

It has performed extremely well on both Windows Mobile devices that I’ve tried it on. This is my second time round of trialing Mobile Admin, as I’d also tested it out several months back on an earlier version. It’s nice to see that Idokorro keeps adding new hooks into more key services and applications. For instance, Backup Exec is now manageable through the current version.

This is a solid and very well-designed program. It is a hugely useful tool for anyone who manages Windows servers and needs to be able to respond quickly to problems and requests no matter where they are when an issue crops up.

As a network manager, if you’ve ever had an occasion where as soon as you go out to lunch an urgent password reset request comes in, or you get called to deal with a hung server when you’re in the car and half an hour away from anywhere you can get onto a PC, or any number of similar situations - Mobile Admin would be an ideal solution for responding quickly.

If your network environment demands quick response no matter where you are, Mobile Admin should certainly be a solution that’s worth looking at.

Mobile Admin is priced based on the number of individual servers you want to be able to manage remotely. For instance, if you purchase it for 1-29 managed servers, it costs $245 per server. The cost per server goes down for larger numbers of managed servers. The mobile client can be used on any number of devices once your server licensing is in place.

Want a Chance to Win a Free Copy of Mobile Admin? - check out our Mobile Admin GiveAway Contest here

For more information and a free trial download of Mobile Admin, go to:

Mobile Admin main page

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