5 must have iPhone apps for admins
August 11, 2008
Whether on call or on site, the system administrator can always use another way to care for his or her systems. With the emergence of the App Store and its multitude of available tools, it’s now possible to get some productivity boosting admin-fu on your phone, without breaking that pesky EULA and jailbreaking your kit.
Here, in no particular order, are 5 must-have apps for the admin iPhone toolkit (and a couple just for fun).
While still missing a few essential features, pTerm is an iPhone port of PuTTY. SSH is my killer iPhone app, and while pTerm isn’t quite as nice as the terminal emulator and OpenSSH available on a jailbroken iPhone, it comes quite close. Telnet, SSH, and raw TCP are available through this app. Perfect for checking whether that service is running on a particular port, or logging in for a quick service restart. The version downloadable as of today doesn’t yet have support for Escape or Tab, but the upcoming upgrade will. ($4.99)
For those of you who require graphical access to your servers or desktops, Mocha VNC (in both lite and full version varieties) provides this on your touch screen. It offers 8-bit and 24-bit color, as well as authenticated sessions. While it can be tough navigating a traditional desktop scaled down on your iPhone screen, it might just come through for you in a pinch when nothing else is available. (Free for Lite / $5.99 for Full)
This is the Swiss Army Knife of your collection. I was so excited to see MobileFinder available on the App Store; it had previously only been available on a jailbroken iPhone. Now that it’s gone legit, this may very well be the most powerful tool in your box. MobileFinder is a simple file explorer and FTP server for your iPhone or iPod Touch. Upload to, download from, and even open directly on the iPhone. It has support for PDFs, MS Office and iWork documents, video, sound, just about everything. Upload other tools (even Windows executables) in your kit to your device, and you’ll never need to carry a USB key again. ($1.99)
If you’re in a Windows world, WinAdmin is your iPhone RDP client. WinAdmin offers multiple concurrent sessions using a Safari-like multiple page interface. Strangely, WinAdmin doesn’t yet support sending Control-Alt-Delete keys. We’re assured that’s coming soon… ($11.99)
If you work with PostgreSQL, you might find MobileCan to be handy. It’s a query tool with one-touch access to many common tasks and has a built in server manager for connecting to all your databases. It’s the iPhone version of OilCan. ($7.99)
Flashlight
Ever crawl under that dark desk or behind a server rack to find you can’t read the lable on that red ethernet cable? Whip out your iPhone and light up your workspace with the iPhone’s bright screen. There are a few flashlight utilities available on the App Store; the free one titled simply “Flashlight” works best for me. (Free)
Sourceforge Network
This one’s just for fun. After you’re through putting out the fire, relax and read some news from the Sourceforge network — slashdot, freshmeat, thinkgeek, linux.com, and of course, sourceforge.net news. (Free)
Have you got an indispensible iPhone app to suggest?
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August 27th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
hi there,
I think DataCase worthwhile a look. For storing files and accessing them later either in the iphone or via FTP or via HTTP.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:41 am
iNag is a great app If you use Nagios to monitor your networks.
iNag
November 11th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Hello, the Mobilefinder app i’am don’t find it in Appstore or Cydia.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:46 pm
With the exception of pterm, these are “must haves” for what? Impressing nerd friends at the lunch table? VNC on an iPhone screen? Come on…
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Nogero – reading comprehension. You need it.