Server Manager 7

City of Flagstaff Success Story

Key benefits:- reduced administrative time and support expense
- better control of server and network performance
- improved network availability

"I've been able to control and manage my servers through one interface. Now I know what you guys meant by the "Do More With Less" slogan."

Tim Van Cleave
Systems Engineer
City of Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

Customer Background

Flagstaff, capital of the Coconino County, is the regional center of northern Arizona and a site of numerous governmental, educational, transportation, cultural, and commercial institutions. With the abundance of state parks, lakes, and vast pine forests, the region is a year-round mecca for visitors. On the other hand, Flagstaff is also a bustling city continuing to attract new scientific and high tech research and development industries, including the Lowell Observatory, as well as stations for the U.S. Naval Observatory and the U.S. Geological Survey. Tasked with the mission of handling critical municipal issues (e.g. finance, budget, employment, taxation, city planning) and with providing high quality administrative services to the local community, the Flagstaff City Hall personnel strongly relies on easy and uninterrupted access to information

The Challenge

To accommodate growing communication needs of Flagstaff network users, Tim Van Cleave, Chief Network Administrator, found himself increasingly in need of a solution that would incorporate all aspects of NetWare server monitoring and management in a single interface, including the ability to centrally manage server performance, users, groups, directories and access rights. After comparing several options Mr. Van Cleave found out that only Server Manager fits this description. He got the program up and running instantly, provided some unique capabilities that were otherwise unavailable, and eliminated the hassle of using multiple applications

The AdRem Solution

"The first thing that struck me in Server Manager was the intuitive interface with a lot of data on the server status that's easy to navigate, edit and share," says Van Cleave. "I quickly found I could monitor important server statistics like requests per second, memory, cache hits, processor or NLM utilization on one screen. Plus I could view and edit information on server SET parameters, configuration and system files, active connections and opened files. I also loved all the NLM-related operations like comparing, distributing and synchronizing NLM configuration across multiple servers."

Van Cleave especially liked the ability to see active users and all the files they are using. This feature enables him to determine disk usage per user, kb/s receiving rates, kb/s sending rates, inactivity time, or time of login and quickly identify the biggest network and disk resource consumers.

Another feature Mr. Van Cleave found helpful was advanced file and directory management, which streamlines recovering, salvaging, purging, searching, and copying files and directories. He also appreciated being able to modify file/directory properties and attributes, schedule many tasks and manage all trustee rights. The latter helps him synchronize and control access rights across the whole network.

Conclusion

By way of summary Mr. Van Cleave said: "I've been able to control and manage my servers through one intuitive interface. Now I know what you guys meant by the "Do More With Less" slogan. Catering to 400 networked users I am a busy guy, but with Server Manager I can respond quicker to problems, better allocate resources and plan for network growth, plus it's much easier to troubleshoot utilization on the servers. On average the program's functionality cuts my daily administrative duties by 30 minutes... Server Manager doesn't use really any network resources and I got it up and running without a problem by myself. I recommend this program to everyone all the time."