10 Best Open Source Tools For Windows Admins

1. Wireshark: 

Wireshark is all about network troubleshooting, which sincerely requires special artistry, long-term training and experience. But Wireshark makes the job easy through its several powerful features.

2. AMANDA: 

Windows admins usually find backing up their systems as a huge painstaking job. Here comes AMANDA in aid of such admins. AMANDA is the short form of Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver and with it an admin is able to set up a single master backup server to support both Windows desktops and servers over the network to other media.

3. MailArchiva: 

Email archiving is an essential task and MailArchiva complies with Windows mail servers. It has both open source and enterprise editions too.

4. RBAC Manager: 

It's a great tool for Windows admins who work with role-based access control and Exchange. RBAC Manager reduces the impact of the lack of a GUI tool and it enables admins to connect through PowerShell.

5. Core Configurator 2.0 for Server Core: 

Core Configurator 2.0 for Server Core offers GUI method to crack open command line versions in order to configure servers.

6. AutoSPInstaller for SharePoint 2010: 

SQL databases form a mess in SharePoint. With AutoSPInstaller a variety of scripts can be utilised to install SharePoint and database names are remain cleaned up always.

7. OCS Inventory: 

This is a cool tool which allows locating all the devices which are connected to your network and it also locates all the software and hardware, installed on systems. You just need to install the OCS client inventory agent on your systems and all the information can be pulled into a repository which makes the search easy.

8. UltraDefrag: 

This open source tool defrags system files and paging file and it gets updated to improve performances. Windows environments benefit a lot from this open source tool.

9. Zenmap: 

This tool maps a topology of devices which are connected to your network. It provides an interactive and animated visualisation of hosts on a network. Vulnerabilities' information gets easier to be found which also ensures that firewalls and routers are working properly.

10. PowerGUI: 

PowerShell is a popular tool on Windows and with PowerGUI, Windows admins get a free graphical user interface and script editor. It has a vast range of contributed scripts and libraries.