Tools of the Trade
We use a variety of tools to perform different jobs on a daily basis. The IT world is no different. We are tradesmen just like any other person who performs task. While we do carry tool bags depending on the job a lot of our tools just happen to be on the computers that we use on a day to day basis. This is were a lot of conflict comes in. Just like a electrician has his/her favorite tool, we in the IT field have ours. IT environments shun on everyone doing this, but if you had a electrician you wouldn't tell him to use your meter so why can't we use our tools once they have been approved?????? Today I want to talk about some of mine and I hope to hear back about some of yours. Traditional hardware tools such as crimps, screwdrivers and punch down cables will not be covered. I will be focusing on softtools that we use to perform the job.
1st up is a text editor. Notepad++ is excellent for this type of work. This is a source code editor, but I use it in in a cisco environment for saving configs and I like to load up configs and do compares, and just have numbers on the side to keep track of where I'm at for long configs. This works better than notepad and its free for use. I highly recommend you trying this out if you are coming from a notepad or wordpad environment. There is no MAC version, but I run this on vmware on windows 7 and I have also been able to ge this up and running on linux using wine.
Next program
SecureCRT
This is the high end of the food chain for serious admins who manage hundreds of devices. If you only have a few you can still benefit from this feature rich program. SSH1 and 2 are supported as well as COM ports. Lots of task can be automated such as logons and pulling down information. Also the most important feature. TAB WINDOWS. You can have several devices you are working on tab so you can jump back and forth or even have them side by side. To do this on putty requires PuttyCM which is not bad, its just that I like the way secureCRT works for me. I have mine customized for different. sessions having different colors so I don't get confused and it works great. I highly recommend you give this the 30 day trial. The only bad side of this is that it cost 100 bucks. Most people who have made the jump say its money well spent and I can only agree. Give it a 30 day try if your a putty or tera term user and if your still using Hyperterminal shame on you.
Last on the list today is TFTP32. Why this program. This is the only 1 that I have found that can load the larger router IOS. I like pumpkin, but it fails on this side of the house. Due to the limitations of TFTP we have a max file size of 16 meg. Most of the time I will just try to load the flash card and stick it in, but some times we are thousands of miles away from a device and hats not possible. Until I find a better one this is what I'm stuck with.
All in all we will find the tools that we fill most comfortable with. I have happened to find these and I recommend you give me a try. There are also some VNC viewers I like and a few other tools that we will talk about next time.
