Essential Sys Admin Tools

One of the best things about Android is the open nature of the development environment. This allows greater freedom for all the devs out there to make apps that might not necessarily be mainstream for your average consumer, but beneficial for niche users. Being a Sys Admin, I’m always on the lookout for apps that will help me in my day to day work. Here I outline a few apps that I think are beneficial to all Systems Administrators out there.

WiFi Analyzer shows channel and strength information for WiFi networks in range. The app has a couple different visual graphs to help analyze and troubleshoot WiFi networks. One of the graphs even has sound, so as you walk around, the rate of the sound increases or decreases depending on the strength of the signal at your current location. You can filter access points by choosing to ignore wireless networks that you’re not interested in. If you like, you can also save a screenshot of the graph that you’re currently viewing and send the results to other apps, like Gmail or Dropbox.

Speedtest measures network speed and keeps a history of your tests. Speed can be displayed in kbps, Mbps, or kB/s. History may be sorted by date, download, or upload speed. It also displays your internal IP, external IP, Lattitude, and Longitude. If you like, you can change your server location from a list and see how many miles you are away from that server.

With this full-featured file and app manager, you can browse files on your local phone, network, or FTP. When attaching to network resources, you can manually enter servers or do a scan to discover all the resources on your LAN. You may save authentication so as to not have to enter user name and password every time. There is a handy SD Card Analyzer that scans your SD card and shows you how space is allocated. Seperate modules can be installed and used through the program such as task manager, security manager, and a bookmark manager. Some basic options are available like theme/layout/file settings, as well as view and directory settings to further customize how things look. You can even setup a file share on your SD card for access over Bluetooth.

AndFTP is a FTP, FTPS, SCP, SFTP client that enables you to manage multiple FTP servers. The app has both a device file manager and FTP file manager that allows for easy transfer of files to and from the phone. You can download, upload and share features with resume support. It can open, rename, delete, update permissions, run custom commands and more.

This handy little app enables you to keep track of all of your logins and passwords.  It keeps a vault of usernames and passwords fully encrypted and accessible to only you with the master password. Once logged into LastPass, the LastPass browser will auto-login to the sites you visit. The app also helps to generate secure passwords. It works on PC, MAC, Android, and iOS, so you can keep all of your logins and passwords synced on all of your devices with ease.

Need a better way to manage your bookmarks from your various electronic devices? This app works on PC, MAC, Android, and iOS, so you can keep all your bookmarks synced on all of your devices with ease. Not only can you add, update, and delete bookmarks on your phone, you can also view open remote tabs, so in case you have a dozen open tabs on your PC’s web browser and you need to go, you can fire up Xmarks and view all these tabs from your phone while on the go.

LogMeIn allows remote access to your LogMeIn machines. It’s awkward to control a PC on such a small screen, but it comes in handy in a pinch. LogMeIn works on PC’s and MAC’s, so you can remotely administer a whole host of client machines from your phone.

Access your Dropbox files from your phone. Syncs with all your PC’s, MAC’s, iOS, and Android devices. Perfect for accessing reference material, to-do lists and notebooks when on the road. You can share links to files, save photos and video from your camera to your computers, and open files with other Android apps.

ConnectBot is a Telnet and SSH Client. Allows you to have multiple SSH sessions going at once. App runs in the background. Also allows for telnet sessions and a local SSH session on your phone. You can modify background and foreground colors. Runs in the background, so if you are running something in a session, you can close the app and it will run in the background.