How many network administration tools born in the 90’s are still innovative today?

                                           VNCscan is one of them!

VNCscan Turns 13 Years Old

My name is Steve Bostedor and I started writing the first version of VNCScan with Philippe Green way back in April of 1999.  As with most of the features in today’s Swiss army knife of a tool, VNC Scan was originally intended to help me manage my own network.

Phil and I put up our first website and public release of version 1.2 in July of 1999. (link credits of archive.org).  Phil and I released a few more free versions under TGCS (Two Guys and a Compiler Software). 

I released the first versions as freeware because I was very frustrated with other software companies charging too much money for their tools.  Their per-computer and per-install license models were pricing their software out of the hands of the network administrators who could use them the most.  I wanted everyone to be able to use a great tool like VNCscan no matter how small their budget was.

A Rapid Growing User Base

By version 3.0, VNCScan development became a full time job just to keep up with all of the feature requests.  With the financial burdens and the time that it took me away from my family, I had no choice to release a paid version of the program.

Other similar programs were charging in excess of $10,000 USD to manage networks of only a few hundred PC’s and servers.  I came to a compromise that I would charge only enough to keep the company profitable and not a penny more.  From this philosophy, the per-admin license model was born.  To my knowledge, VNCscan was the first software in the world to be licensed under that model.

Under the Per-Admin model, you can run as many copies of the program as you need and manage as many PC’s and servers as you have for only one small license fee for each administrator using the program.  That fee is only $59 today and has been that price for almost a decade.

A Company Of Firsts

The consumer centric Per-Admin license model was just one of the many areas in which VNCScan pioneered and changed the industry forever.  We were the first VNC Manager, and the first one to have a multi-threaded scanning engine.  VNCscan hosted the first integrated VNC deployment tool and pushed the bar higher and higher as copycat software began to follow our lead. 

In order to help fight spyware on remote computers, VNCScan became the first tool in the world to remotely reboot a computer into safe mode and then control the desktop remotely.  I wasn’t sure if anyone other than me thought that was a cool idea until I saw it snatched up as a bragged about feature in our competitors release notes months later. 

VNCScan has celebrated a lot of industry “firsts” over the years including the ability to remotely enable RDP, execute powershell, Kix, and VBS scripts remotely, and much more.  This trend continues today. 

An Organic Cycle

I have worked in the IT field for almost two decades.  Many of the time saving features found in VNCScan such as the ability to test the speed of your LAN between you and a remote computer were born out of my own necessity.  Other great features were included as user submitted ideas. 

VNCScan is such a progressive and feature rich product because it is grown organically from the field in which it is consumed.  Network Administrators from all over the globe rely upon the software daily and are gracious enough to contribute suggestions and bug reports religiously.  This helps the program grow  stronger and become even more indispensible to those of you in the field.

Thank you!

We may be the code monkeys behind the monitors but you are the reason for our success.  Every interaction with someone from our user base is a breath of fresh air.  I am humbled at the great feedback that the product receives in your blogs and social network postings.  I truly feel unworthy of such an honor but am eternally thankful.

From my family to yours … Thank You!

Steve Bostedor
Bozteck Founder and CTO

Microsoft has made great strides in security since the original release of Windows XP.  In later service packs, they turned the firewall on by default, built security measures into Internet Explorer, and disabled unneeded services.

More recently, Microsoft released their own consumer antivirus product named Security Essentials.  Being an Information Security professional, it’s hard for me to be upset with Microsoft throwing warnings like this when software that enables remote access to your computer is installed.

Being the software author of a program that is used legitimately by thousands of you across the globe to manage your business and school networks. this message is also quite frustrating!  It looks scary … and red; two things that we are conditioned as IT Professionals to squash like a cockroach. 

Is UltraVNC a threat to your network?

Like any remote management software, the answer lies in how you manage the software.  VNCScan is an excellent tool for this because it can be used to audit where VNC and RDP is enabled on your network and remove it if needed.  It also allows you to take control of misconfigured VNC installations by deploying a secured profile using encryption and Windows or Active Directory authentication.

The first time that you run VNCScan, create a managed group, then scan your networks IP range, you may be surprised to find rogue VNC installations on your network installed by end users.  Over time, the background scanner can discover other installations as they appear and even email you when they are found.

The bottom line is that VNC is a great network management tool that is relied upon by millions of IT professionals every day.  If you lose control of the tool, however, it can be a nightmare to secure.  VNCScan is your key to preventing that on your network.

It’s your network.  Take control of it with VNCScan!

Download: http://www.bozteck.com/vncscan/downloads.html

If you want to share you screen with others on your network, you can do this from VNCScan using the remote scripting tool.  This will soon be a built in feature but until then, you can “hack” the solution together this way.

Instructions

Open the script editor as shown below:

Choose to create a new script:

Add the script text as shown below substituting your own IP address:

(click to make larger)

Browse to add the vncviewer.exe in with your script.

Hint: There is one in c:\fastpush\vnc7\ultra

Check the box to make the script interactive.

Click Save and Close

———————————-

Now, select a computer and run the script.

1. Update one copy of VNCScan to the latest release but don’t launch it yet
2. Close ALL other users out of VNCscan
3. Run VNCScan on the newly upgraded computer
4. Upgrade all of the rest of the users of VNCScan

This procedure is required so that if there are any updates to the database structure, the newly upgraded version has full control of the database to apply them upon first run.

Overview

This video shows you how to share your VNCScan data with your co-workers.  I also touch on the new data import tool.

You can download the latest beta of VNCScan Database Edition here.

‘

Importing Existing Groups and Computers

If you are upgrading, you will be presented with the following dialog box upon first run:

Once you select Yes, you will be taken to the following dialog:

Pressing the Import button will pull all of your groups and computer information from your XML files into the new database.  Once the import is complete, it will close and present you with the new main form.

Sharing Computers and Groups

You can now share your computers and groups with the rest of your team members.  Here’s How!

1. Create a folder on a commonly mapped network location.  You MUST map a common drive letter.  A \\UNC path causes problems.
2. Change the location of the data on the MASTER computer as shown below:
3. Choose “Yes” when asked to copy your files.
4. Perform step 2 on all of the other computers but when asked to copy the files, say “No”

Other Improvements

•  The performance and reliability of the background scanning has been vastly improved.  It uses 80% less CPU cycles and uses 95% less memory overhead
• If you have ever experienced the bug that caused your groups or computers to disappear, you can say good riddance to that one in this version
• Managed groups with a lot of computers in them should load in a fraction of the time
• Computer search (in the upper right of the main form) speed has been increased by over 90%
• Performance improvements have been made to many common forms such as the computer properties window
• Some people saw a phantom group show up frequently named “Creation Date”.  No more.

Historical Overview

When the first versions of our VNC Manager were released way back in 1999, the data was stored in a Microsoft Access database.  Despite the popular (and often justified) opinion of Microsoft’s Access database, there are some applications that use data “just right” for that platform and VNCScan was one of them.

After frustrations with requiring multiple runtimes for Access, the decision was made to move the data to an XML format.  A lot of code was written to manage that process smoothly on the thousands of existing VNCScan installs deployed all over the globe.  The XML format has been working pretty well over the past 10 years but there are some pretty serious issues that the time has come to address.

Issues with XML Databases

The largest sacrifice of moving to XML was the ability to share one set of data with many administrators.  When the back end was database driven, multiple computers could pull from the same data at the same time with very good performance and reliability.  After moving to flat XML files, doing so often led to groups disappearing and data files that became corrupted so badly that it prevented the program from starting up.  We had to remove any support for sharing data with XML. because of this.

For example, if John and Mike both point their VNCScan consoles at the same data location, they will constantly be stepping on each others changes.  An XML file must be read into memory, modified, then placed back onto the disk as a complete file (overwriting whatever is there).

If John reads the data into his console, then Mike makes a change to the group, and then John makes a different change to HIS copy of the group, Johns change will wipe out Mikes change even if they change different properties of the group.  If they both try to write their changes simultaneously, they end up with a corrupted XML file.

The Great Database Debate

A while back, I made a blog post asking opinions of using an Access back end verses using a Microsoft SQL Server back end.  I received a lot of emails with great responses from so many of you!

On one hand, the Access database format needs to be compacted and repaired from time to time to get rid of orphaned data and “white space” in the database.  It also does not do well with a lot of threads hitting it at the same time.

On the other hand, Access is a very portable database format that requires no runtime (any more) to use in your program and holds up well with the type of data accesses that VNCScan performs.  I’ve also taken performance heavily into consideration with each line of code that I have written to mitigate any “over use” of the database.

If we were to use a SQL database, we would need to deploy the Microsoft SQL runtimes (MSDE) or require that every customer has a SQL server on premises.  For the style of data that VNCScan employs, both of those options seemed like overkills at this point.

The Future

The initial database version of VNCScan will be backed by a Microsoft Access database.  The code was written in a way that will make it VERY easy to port it to a SQL database in the near future.  While we have tested VNCScan extensively on the Access database, we will be watching “wide eyed” for any indication that the platform isn’t good enough.

I believe that by June, we will have a version that will have a choice between Access and SQL. We’re only releasing the first version as Access based to cure the ills that plague the XML.  Even with its shortcomings, Access databases are a hundred times better than XML.

The Beta

We are in the final stages of “dog fooding” the database version.  That means that we’re using it internally so that we feel any hardships before the beta testers do.

Within the next day or so, you will see a bog post with instructions and a link to try the beta.  I strongly suggest that you back up your <My Documents>\VNCScan folder before installing the beta.

[Download VNCScan 2012.1.1]

Change log

• Updated to the latest version of UltraVNC for remote deployment
• Redesigned much of the interface to make things even more intuitive.  You can see a screen shot of the new form here.
• Added a button to the main form common tasks to enable RDP Remote Desktop on computers remotely
• Rewrote the XML data handling engine to improve performance when navigating data in the application
• We all hate bugs so we killed a bunch of them
• MUCH more room for the RDP tab.  By default, the RDP sessions take advantage of the increased real estate.

If you would like to beta test, you can download it here.

]]> http://vncscan.com/blog/2011/12/its-coming-vncscan-2012/feed/ 4 http://vncscan.com/blog/2011/11/remote-desktop-screen-captures/ http://vncscan.com/blog/2011/11/remote-desktop-screen-captures/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:33:18 +0000 Bozteck http://vncscan.com/blog/2011/11/remote-desktop-screen-captures/

Overview

VNCScan has had remote screen captures for about a year, now, but the latest version has brought that feature more front and center for you.  With only a few clicks, you can now capture the screen of a remote computer to your console.

To use this feature, you will need to supply remote administrator level credentials to VNCScan so that it can access the desktop resources on the remote computers.  You can set this easily in the group or computer properties

Here are some basic requirements:

• You must supply Administrative access to the remote computer
• Firewall must allow connection to TCP 445 and 139 for file transfers
• Remote computers must be Windows 2000 SP4 or better
• Someone must be logged onto the remote computer or no screen will capture

How To

    You can get to this feature on an individual desktop by simply right-clicking on a computer and then choosing . 

    You can also place the screen captures into a thumbnail view so that you can monitor an entire lab or classroom in one screen.  To do this, simply right-click a computer, then choose Thumbnails, then choose to either add it to a new tab window or add it to an existing one.  It’s that simple!

    The remote screen capture feature in VENM does not require that VNC or any other client software be installed or running on the remote computer.  It uses Bozteck patented technology to automatically snap a capture of the remote desktop with the lightest footprint of any other application we’ve ever seen!

Check it out!

You can download a fully functional trial of Bozteck VENM console here.