sfConsole 2009
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Key benefits:
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"From my perspective, AdRem sfConsole is a big help in maintaining security and ensuring the productivity of our administrators."
Jean-Marc Mottet
Systems Engineer
State of Geneva / CTI, Switzerland
Customer Background
The Swiss state of Geneva and its principal city, Geneva, serves as Europe's host to many leading international organizations, including the United Nations, CERN, the birthplace of World Wide Web, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as hundreds of multinational companies. As the state of Geneva strives to fulfill its role as a leading center of technology, politics and global commerce, its dedicated staff of network administrators continues to search for industry-leading solutions to leverage existing technology investments, add new functionality, and provide a solid foundation for future technology needs.
The Challenge
With the daily pressures of managing an increasingly large, global network that includes 200+ NetWare 5.1 servers in over 100 locations, State of Geneva / CTI administrators increasingly found themselves in need of a secure server console remote access solution. Two top priorities for the project were to eliminate the security risks associated with administrators using unencrypted remote console access, and to eliminate the need for administrators to travel to the local consoles in order to perform routine network administration tasks. In addition, there was a need to provide local technicians with limited rights on individual consoles, such as only allowing them to perform delegated tasks like checking connectivity, restarting an NDPS gateway or resetting a server.
The AdRem Solution
"After learning about AdRem sfConsole from John McGowan of Novell Consulting, we tested and evaluated the product," said Jean-Marc Mottet, Systems Engineer at Centre des Technologies de l'Information (CTI). By increasing accessibility to mission-critical NetWare servers through AdRem sfConsole, CTI is now benefiting from a notable improvement in administrative productivity and security.
"We quickly discovered that sfConsole provided CTI administrators with the ability to quickly open one or many server consoles with a transparent identification, as well as optimized access across slow links," said Mottet. "With 200 servers to manage, we then found we could save nearly all the time previously spent performing daily tasks (NDS Health Check, NDS local database repairs) on local servers, and that we would save even more time when performing intermittent actions, such as installing service packs across all servers one at a time. My estimate is that sfConsole probably delivers 20 to 30 earned minutes a day for each of the four CTI administrators, with the added bonus of a more calm working environment that allows us to focus on more important projects."
Adds Mottet, "AdRem sfConsole 4.1 provides secure access to both remote and local server consoles. It even provides four different levels of local server access protection. Using the remote console included in NetWare, Rconsole, creates a risk of capturing administrator's password or even server hacking. AdRem sfConsole protects our NetWare servers against such problems: all data is sent through safe, encrypted connections and every access must be authorized by the directory."
With sfConsole, CTI remote administrators are authenticated in eDirectory and the connection is 128-bit key encrypted. Each local console is safeguarded with a Novell eDirectory password-protected screensaver and keyboard blockade. It is also easy to define which server screens a particular administrator may access, and which console commands the administrator may execute. Across the state, every branch office administrator is granted this type of limited rights.
Conclusion
According to Jean-Marc Mottet, AdRem sfConsole 4 has met or exceeded all requirements for a secure remote access solution for managing the state of Geneva's NetWare investments. "From my perspective, AdRem sfConsole is a big help in maintaining security and ensuring the productivity of our administrators. CTI administrators are very satisfied with this product and its editor. I think personally that the security gains alone are sufficient to justify the usage of sfConsole, thanks to the encryption and to the (limited) rights delegation," said Mottet. "AdRem has also been great about supporting sfConsole with frequent updates and bug fixes. Its safety and ease of use, as well as its very effective method of deployment convinced us early on that we had a winner."
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