Top 10 Free Tools for System Administrators

If you are a frequent reader of Redmond Magazine, you may have seen the article titled:

Top 10 Free Tools for System Administrators

All of the links in the article basically point to the Freeware Tools offered by Netwrix: https://www.netwrix.com/freeware_tools.html

The one I have personally tried is the Password Manager.  If you have an Active Directory implementation that does not implement an Exchange Server (for example, if you are using a 3rd party e-mail provider such as Google Apps for Business), then you will not have the ability to allow users to easily change their own Active Directory passwords if they expire or they get locked out of their machine.  In those instances, it is nice to have a web based Self Service Portal that allows the users to change their own Windows passwords in the event of a lockout.

However, there are a few things that I don't like about the tool and its software requirements:

• It still requires .NET 3.5 and ASP.NET 3.5
• It sill requires IIS 6 Compatibility Mode
• It still uses Classic ASP

It would be nice if the freeware application was a bit modernized to use ASP.NET v. 4.5 exclusively and support IIS 7 and above natively.  Based on the copyright date of the freeware application, however, it seems that it has not been updated in the last 2 years.  Oh well, I guess that is what you get for using "Freeware".  It is not actively updated and maintained in order to try and persuade users to buy its commercial version.