IT Pro Tuesday #217
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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!
We're looking for your favorite tips and tools we can share with the community... those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please reply or leave a comment with your suggestions, and we'll be featuring them in the coming weeks.
As always, we’re updating the full list on our website here. Enjoy.
Free Tools
Python Frameworks is a resource of Python classes and scripts that can be helpful when dealing with some of the common networking applications. Kindly shared by the author, cheesemilkbread, who explains, "These were tested and deployed on networks with multiple/8s. They may be rusty, but they definitely work." Includes 'frameworks' for: BIG-IQ, BIG-IP (iControl REST API), NetMRI, ThousandEyes, ServiceNow (federated and non), Interactions with databases (MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, etc.), Cisco CSM, Cisco CDO, Checkpoint CMA, Infoblox DDI, a full BGP Peer script and a few others."
A Tutorial
Logging Made Easy (LME) is a self-install tutorial and some free/open-source tools that will introduce basic logging capabilities that can be used to improve cyber security. Includes configuration files and scripts. Information gathered includes: software patch levels on enrolled devices, where administrative commands are being run on those devices and who is using which machine. Thanks for this suggestion go to stuartsmiles01.
Another Free Tool
Collectd pulls metrics from the OS, applications, logfiles and external devices for use in monitoring systems, finding performance bottlenecks and capacity planning. hombre_sabio explains, "Collectd is a tiny daemon that gathers information from a system. It enables mechanisms to collect and observe the values in different techniques. It is an open-source monitoring tool to retrieve and manage SNMP master agents."
One More Free Tool
Termux is a terminal emulator and Linux environment app for Android. It requires no rooting or setup, automatically installs a minimal base system and enables you to add other packages with the APT package manager. NinoIvanov explains, it "allows you to get a quasi "normal" Linux CLI, with all the tools."
Another Tutorial
Getting Started with PowerShell and the PSWindowsUpdate Module is a fantastic blog post that walks you through exactly how to use the PSWindowsUpdate module, a favorite of xpingjockey.
P.S. Bonus Free Tools
ProduKey is a simple utility to display the ProductID and CD-Key for Microsoft Office, Windows, Exchange Server and SQL Server installed on a computer. Info can be displayed from the current running operating system or from another operating system/computer. Happy_Harry is pleased to find it "surprisingly still works after all these years."
Easy Context Menu allows you to add a variety of useful functions to the right-click context menus for Desktop, My Computer, Drives, File and Folder.The GUI's checkbox selection enables you to easily add super-fast access to the most-used Windows components. QuietThunder2014 recommends it to "add/remove items off the Context Menu quickly."
Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.