InformationWeek

March 13, 2000

Novel Notebook Management
Orbiter's Ability to send jobs via E-mail is a powerful option

allisto Software Inc.'s Orbiter provides easy solutions for network administrators who need to manage remote PCs, including road warriors' notebooks, telecommuters' desktop PCs, and even end-user systems in out-of-the-way locations on an enterprise campus.

Orbiter is a proactive information-gathering and remote configuration tool, not a troubleshooting tool. It doesn't give you the remote keyboard, mouse, and monitor capabilities of Danware's NetOp, LapLink.com's LapLink, or Symantec's pcAnywhere, and it won't rescue a remote PC that has crashed.

Orbiter's power comes from its client, installed as an application on a Windows 9x PC or as a service on a Windows NT Workstation or Windows 2000 Professional PC. The client executes maintenance tasks assigned to it from the Orbiter server--referred to as "jobs"--that instruct the client to take a hardware or software inventory, run a virus check, defragment a hard drive, and so on.

The remote client can warn the Orbiter server about conditions such as low disk space. Administrators can also create a package, a set of data or application files to be copied to the remote system. If those files define a new or updated program, that app can be installed on the remote PC.

Of course, in cases like that, it's necessary to send all the application's installation programs, as well as the application itself. Because modern programs are often huge--many megabytes in size--it may not be practical to perform remote software installations unless the client has access to a very high bandwidth connection to the server, preferably over a LAN.

If the client is hanging off a phone line via a modem, remote software installations are impractical. I installed the Orbiter server version 3.1 on a Windows NT 4 SP6a server and the Orbiter clients on several PCs running Windows 98 and Windows 2000 Professional in our lab. I instructed the server to communicate with the clients via TCP/IP, but Orbiter can also send jobs to clients via E-mail, using Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, or Lotus cc:Mail.

After trying a variety of tasks, I found the Orbiter server interface to be clean and easy to operate. It provides a great deal of flexibility in defining packages, and administrators will find it easy to schedule jobs across groups of end-user systems. The software's inventory database and report generator do a good job of providing ready troubleshooting data for a help desk.

The Orbiter client application is unobtrusive, though an end user could accidentally disable the Windows 9x application.

Overall, if you're managing many remote PCs that will require regular remote maintenance, Orbiter is a good candidate for the job. While it can't provide real-time remote administration or do much to move large application images over slow connections, the versatility of delivering jobs over E-mail is a surprisingly powerful option.

Alan Zeichick is a principal analyst with Camden Associates, which con-ducts independent technology research. He can be reached at zeichick@camdenassociates.com.

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