IT professionals need to make use of seemingly endless software tools and resources in the course of their work. The following tools will help simplify and consolidate many common tasks, making your business more productive.
Top Remote Desktop Client: Remmina
Remmina is GTK remote desktop client that supports most popular desktop sharing protocols, including RDP, VNC and SSH. It allows you to run graphical applications hosted on a headless server or any other remote machine.
Top Cluster Computing Platform: Apache Hadoop
Apache Hadoop is quickly becoming the preferred platform for running applications over distributed systems. Hadoop is incredibly flexible, making it perfect for high-performance clusters, data centers, and even loosely distributed systems running commodity hardware.
Top Version Control Software: Git
Originally created to facilitate development of the Linux kernel, git is now one of most popular version control systems around. Git is completely distributed, allowing development without reliance on an always accessible remote server, and is designed to facilitate non-linear development by a large number of contributors. While used primarily for source code management, git can be used for virtually any project that requires keeping track of multiple versions of files or working access to several team members.
Top Server Virtualization: OpenVZ
OpenVZ is a virtualization solution that allows for management of multiple server instances on one machine. OpenVZ sets itself apart from other virtualization solutions in that it is an entire operating system built from the ground up for virtualization. This allows for more direct management of running virtual machines and more efficient resource sharing between instances. The increased efficiency of OpenVZ results in a noticable performance boost over other virtualization software and allows more virtual servers to be run on one machine.
Top Network Mapper: Nmap
Nmap is the Swiss Army Knife of network analysis. It includes features for host discovery, port scanning, operating system detection, and packet analysis. Scripts can be written using Lua and the Nmap Scripting Engine to automate frequent or complex tasks. A wide variety of graphical front-ends adds to the convenience and usability of Nmap.