AWERProcedia Information Technology & Computer Science Vol 04 (2013) 442-446
3rd World Conference on Innovation and Computer Sciences 2013
A System Management Tools For Netwotk Computing System Anis Ismail* , University Institute of Technology Lebanese University 813 Saida Lebanon. Abd El Salam AL Hajjar, University Institute of Technology Lebanese University 813 Saida Lebanon. Mohammad Hajjar, University Institute of Technology Lebanese University 813 Saida Lebanon. Mazen EL-Sayed,University Institute of Technology Lebanese University 813 Saida Lebanon. Suggested Citation: Ismail A., AL Hajjar S., E., A., Hajjar M. & Sayed E., M. A System Management Tools For Netwotk Computing System AWERProcedia Information Technology & Science [Online]. 2013, 04, pp 442-446. Available from: www.awer-center.org/pitcs Received December 23, 2012; revised February 10, 2013; accepted March 05, 2013. Selection and peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Fahrettin Sadıkoglu, Near East University. ©2013 Academic World Education & Research Center. All rights reserved. Abstract One of the main challenges in running a network computing system is to manage the different PCs that are allocated for use by provisionally users. System administrators face various scenarios, such as viewing all the active PCs over the network, the user can also delete important files, thus bringing down an application or the operating system itself, installing new applications that might necessitate a change in some system libraries, thereby creating conflict with existing applications, collecting, sending/receiving and synchronizing files between different PCs. In this paper, a system management tools is designed for any network computing system such as “University computer laboratory” that responds to the most of system administration requirements presented above. The strength of this system is facilitating the administration remotely from several points such as controlling remote desktop, sending/receiving files, installing/uninstalling programs, etc. Keywords: Network, System Management, computer laboratory, Remotely administration;
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ADSRESS FOR CORRESPONDANCE: Anis ISMAIL, University Institute of Technology Lebanese University 813 Saida Lebanon, E-mail Address:
[email protected]
Ismail A., AL Hajjar S., E., A., Hajjar M. & Sayed E., M. A System Management Tools For Netwotk Computing System. AWERProcedia Information Technology & Computer Science. [Online]. 2013, 04, pp 442- 446. Available from: www.awer-center.org/pitcs
1. Introduction Computers are grouped together in a network to provide digital communications. Computer networks are critical for carrying digital data used for Internet, IP telephony, video teleconferencing, ecommerce, file transfers, e-mail, databases, etc. as these networks become bigger, more powerful, and more versatile, and the network computers can be programmed to perform more complex tasks. Accordingly, software applications are becoming quite sophisticated. Problems arise when software has to be distributed across the network, managing multiple computers connected to a network (sending/ receiving file, remote desktop, etc.). For instance, when new software is routinely being installed to give users new functionalities; software upgrades are installed for improved efficiency; and network software is also installed to help monitoring and administering the performance of the network [1]. In the past, physically a network administrator would have to visit each of the individual computer and manually install the software onto the particular station, so this will consume time. Furthermore, this is not efficiently because of the associated downtime as the software was being installed. In addition, there is much overhead expended in administering, tracking, maintaining an accurate and an updated logging of the software state for each of the computer across the entire network, and there can also be some problems encountered with respect to software compatibility, troubleshooting, and licensing issues. The objective of this paper is to present a new system management tools that permits controlling remotely, in a real time, a computer connected to a local network, without the user of that computer that realizes this exploration. The strength of this tool requires no previous installation on remote stations that would be controlled. The requirement is only to have an account for these stations. The remote control takes place through the graphic, convivial interfaces, easy to use. Our system management tool is designed for any network computing system such as “University computer laboratory” that responds to the most of system administration requirements presented above. The strength of this system is facilitating the administration remotely from several points such as controlling remote desktop, sending/receiving files, installing /uninstalling programs. The following of this article is organized as following. In the paragraph 2, we present the related works. The paragraph 3 described our system architecture. The paragraph 4 described functionalities of our tool. Finally, a general conclusion will be provided in the last paragraph. 2. Related Works There are many times you need to have the access of a remote computer or give the access of your computer to a remote person. Different methods and tools frequently used to administer remote Windows systems, which let you able to perform basic system administration [2], such as, Microsoft Remote Procedure Call “MSRPC” *3+ which is an inter-process communication “IPC” mechanism that enables data exchange and invocation of functionality residing in a different process. That process can be on the same computer, on the local area “LAN”, or across the Internet. The Microsoft RPC mechanism uses other IPC mechanisms, such as named pipes, NetBIOS, or Winsock, to establish communications between the client and the server, Web based remote administration tools which do not require permanent client software or a network change but need web server to control remote computer, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is an infrastructure that enables you to access and modify standards-based information about objects, such as computers, applications, and network components, in your enterprise environment. Using WMI, you can create powerful administration applications to monitor and respond to specific events in your environment [4] where we had been used to build our tool according to their advantages that are no previous installation on the remote stations, part of windows 2000/XP/vista/7. A bibliographic research permitted to localize some software doing tasks separately, administration, surveillances, using the WMI technology. We can mention for example: the software Goverlan Remote Administration [5], XR PerfMon Tools [6], BMC Software's [7], WMI Explorer [8] that allow to Explore 443
Ismail A., AL Hajjar S., E., A., Hajjar M. & Sayed E., M. A System Management Tools For Netwotk Computing System. AWERProcedia Information Technology & Computer Science. [Online]. 2013, 04, pp 442- 446. Available from: www.awer-center.org/pitcs
the full set of WMI management classes, objects and their properties, to Browse through objects and settings on remote machines and to Execute any WQL query and view the result set. The major inconvenience of those softwares is that they are not free. [9] Present a new management system permitting to explore remotely, in real time, a computer connected to a local network or Peer to Peer (P2P) Network, from a remote station, without that the user of this computer realizes this exploration Our tool is developed using the Visual Basic.NET 2010 language [10] and used C# as programming language. Our architecture is normalized interface to permit reaching resources of a computer under Windows, to interrogate them, to manage them and even to configure them. 3. System Architecture The Figure 1 shows the architecture of our new system for supporting and managing the computer salle network from our own computer. Our system is composed of several modules: Remote Desktop, the folder/file management, and salle configuration. Figure 1 – system Architecture In computing, the term remote desktop refers to the software feature that allows applications, either command line programs or graphical applications, to run remotely on your computer, while being displayed locally [12]. In our system, we built a module that allows controlling a remote computer over the network from the local computer with the local computer authentication; in general the local computer must have the full access authentication as administrator. This module allows transmitting its own screen display, keyboard and mouse activity to the controlled computer, so that the remote control software implements these actions. Easily, from our system, you can view the selected salle, in this salle you can navigate all the computers using its IPs, by clicking on one of these IP (or enter this IP), a new remote desktop session is opened and you work remotely on that computer. The network folder/file management refers to the manipulation of folders and files on a computer network. Specifically, one may create a new folder/file or edit/delete an existing folder/file. This management is not easy if we have many computers over network, for example if we do lab exam in the university for 10 students to get theirs files, you must go to each computer locally to collect their exam and therefore, it takes time, so to resolve this problem we built a module that allow to display in a tree from all the Salles, and therefore by clicking on its IPs we can view all the directories, folders and files, from this application and also we can determine the destination folder then copy all needed files and vice versa we can transfer any files to all remote computers by one click. Otherwise we can fix the mapping between a folder in the Salle PCs (e.g. E:\temp) and the same folder in every Salle PC, and we have a synchronization button that allow to synchronize the files between these folders In this system, we can configure all the network information, that stored in the relational database and contained all computer specifications (@IPs, Salle….), and the organization of these PCs. Through our system we can add delete or update the network information by adding, removing and even updating these information. The main object of this part is the following database that manages our specific network information: 4. System Functionalities Our system utility is a strong networking technology, which helps you to connect between computers remotely in distinct location. With the help of this application you can easily connect your host computer over a network and access all program, files and network resources through your computer, in the sense you can get full control of your remote computer. 444
Ismail A., AL Hajjar S., E., A., Hajjar M. & Sayed E., M. A System Management Tools For Netwotk Computing System. AWERProcedia Information Technology & Computer Science. [Online]. 2013, 04, pp 442- 446. Available from: www.awer-center.org/pitcs
4.1. Remote Desktop Remote Desktop Connection (figure 2) is one of Windows Add-on components that access a remote computer through the network. With Remote Desktop Connection, you can access a computer running Windows from another computer running Windows that is connected to the same network. For example, you can use all of your work computer's programs, files, and network resources from your home computer, and it's just like you're sitting in front of remote computer. To connect to a remote computer, that computer must be turned on, and must have a network connection, Remote Desktop must be enabled, you must also have network access to the remote computer, and you must have permission to connect (knowing user on the remote computer). Figure 2 – system Architecture 4.2. Receiving files The interface of figure 3 permits to receive files from group of computers connected together through a local area network to a local computer. We precise the range IP (start IP and End IP) and the location where we want to copy all remote information. Figure 3 – enter a path to collect the folders or files 4.3. Sending files The interface of figure 4 permits to send files from a local computer to a group of computers connected together through a local area network. We precise the range IP (start IP and End IP) and the location where we want to copy information from a local computer. Figure 4 – select the file or directory that we want to send 4.4. Configuration interface The interface of figure 5 represents the configuration interface to our system. In this interface, we can add a new “salle” by specifying its name and range of IPs (start IP and IP), we can modify or remove existing “salle. Figure 10 – configuration interface 5. Conclusion In this paper, we presented a new system management tool that permits controlling remote desktop, sending/receiving files; to/from group of computer connected together through a local area network from/to a local computer. Our software is tested and has delivered the desired level of performance to meet all the specified requirements for Software verification phase which contains consistency, completeness, and correctness of the software and its supporting documentation, as it is being developed, and provides support for a subsequent conclusion that software is validated. Our design also meets all of the specified requirements for Software validation phase to ensure that all requirements have been fulfilled. Our software considers software validation to be "confirmed by examination and provision of objective evidence that our software specifications conform to user needs and intended uses, and that the particular requirements implemented through our software can be consistently fulfilled. Applications of this system are numerous so one can mention notably: the big computer park administration and the surveillance of the local. 445
Ismail A., AL Hajjar S., E., A., Hajjar M. & Sayed E., M. A System Management Tools For Netwotk Computing System. AWERProcedia Information Technology & Computer Science. [Online]. 2013, 04, pp 442- 446. Available from: www.awer-center.org/pitcs
Acknowledgements This work has been done as a part of the project: "Extraction automatique d’information à partir des documents Arabes", supported by the UL. References Harrison, Brian; Lee, Kyu-Woong; Rogers, Christina M.; Remote execution of software using windows management instrumentation, United States Patent 7035920, 2006. Anis Ismail, Mohammad Hajjar, Haissam Hajjar, Remote Administration Tools: A Comparative Study, Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology, pp. 140-148, 2008. Hervé Schauer Consultants, Jean-Baptiste Marchand, Windows network services internals, 2006. Support WebCast: WMIC: A New Approach to Managing Windows Infrastructure from a Command Line, 2006. URL: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=325427 White paper – Goverlan Security Information". PJ Technologies, Inc.. 2009. http://www.pjtec.com/ XRatel Software 2005-2006: http://www.xratel.com/ Heather Real BMC Software 2006: http://www.bmc.com/ WMI Explorer 1.00, 2006: http://www.sharewareplaza.com/WMI-Explorer-download_36422.html Anis Ismail, Mohammad HAJJAR, Mazen EL-SAYED, A New Management Tools For Remote-Access Through Lan Using Wmi Technology, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences , BME 2012. Visual Basic Language Reference, 2012, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sh9ywfdk.aspx. VB.NET language, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_.NET Remote desktop software, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_desktop_ software.
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