I've had the previlage of working with some pretty cool software for maintaining servers. One
of these is RemotelyAnywhere, by LogMeIn Inc.
Picture this: You are needing to log into a remote server with minimal terminal session licenses.
You open your RDP session and type in the IP address, only to be met with a pop-up stating there
are too many users logged in. What to do?
Since RA can be configured as an SSH client on any server it's installed on, start up a PuTTY session
and point it at the appropriate RA port (2000 is the default according to documentation).
Host Name (IP): 120.0.0.1 Port: 2000
.
.
.
login as:
SSH server: Windows Authentication
Using keyboard-interactive authentication.
Password:
Domain:
If all goes well, you should be dropped into a console based on your credentials. From here you can
run local commands or, my personal favorite, you can jump into a SECOND server if you have PSEXEC...
C:\PsTools>psexec \\TestServer1 -s cmd.exe
PsExec v1.97 - Execute preocess remotely
Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com
Microsoft Windows [Version 5.2.3790]
(C) Copyright 1985-2003 Microsoft Corp.
C:\WINDOWS\system32>hostname
TestServer1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello, console...all without using a Terminal Session. :)
Why do this?
(1) it's fun
(2) if all you need is, say, a list of installed patches, you can simply run a command and pull
the results you need. You don't have to go through the GUI, waiting for other people to finish their stuff.
It's also useful when you are NOT on a domain and only have one Admin account for SysAdmins to work on. While one SA
is installing drivers, I can be running scripts to configure security settings.