Question:

Can you tell me about the network(s) you administer with AA? How many users in how many locations, what mix of OS's, what kinds of users you support, what kinds of servers are you running?

Answer:

I've used AA on two Active Directory domains supporting any Windows box in the domain including XP and Vista workstations, and 2003 and 2008 servers. Most of my customers are general computer users without too many specialized programs and my servers are mostly file-and-print with some database servers and miscellaneous apps.

Question:

How do you use AA day-to-day? Is there one part of the program you use more than the rest?

Answer:

Day-to-day I use AA for monitoring. It's sort of my unsung hero. I've set up a number of monitors to help me automate my job. Some monitors watch event logs to keep me informed of security issues. Another one lets me sleep at night by watching for stopped services on one of our critical servers and restarting them when they stop unexpectedly. And generally this is all happening behind the scenes, day in and day out and I only hear about it when it catches a problem. I've also built the occasional monitor to watch performance on customer's machines to help troubleshoot the issues they're having. This makes things so much easier than trying to catch the system in the act when a customer calls.

Question:

Can you tell me about a time or two AA was particularly helpful?

Answer:

I use AA's remote software install feature at least monthly to quickly push out Microsoft's security updates. I also have packages built for a number of commonly used applications that sometimes need reinstalling – it saves so much time not having to walk out to someone's computer and/or wait till they have time to let me do the install. Installing applications remotely is so convenient because the user rarely even notices anything's happening. I use the remote command feature daily because it makes it so easy to run a quick command on a remote machine. I can find out everything I need to know about a system without the customer ever knowing I was there. This really cuts down on the time spent fixing trouble tickets.

Question:

What else should other system administrators know about AA?

Answer:

Other system administrators need to know that there is an unbelievably affordable enterprise management tool available. And you don't have to hire a team to manage it, you just use it.

Question:

What does your management think of AA?

Answer:

Management is VERY happy with the price-to-feature ratio. We've looked at a number of tools and couldn't find one that fits the budget and the functionality like AA does. And there are a number of features management is enjoying without realizing AA is providing them. I've used AA's hardware and software inventories a number of times to answer data calls quickly. It makes my life easier having the data in one place and quick to get to.