InfoWorld's top picks among all the handy open source tools that make life easier for sys admins The best open source admin tools Getting familiar with all the open source admin tools out there would be like learning all the stars in the sky. From Linux and Windows server administration to rack and data center management, open source has a whole galaxy of tools to ease the burden on admins. For this year’s Bossies, we salute a dozen of our favorite tools for getting the job done faster and easier. Process Hacker Process Hacker provides all the functionality of Windows’ Process Explorer utility, plus a whole lot more. You can see all network connections, open/listening ports, and the connected processes. Click the Processes tab to get a tree view of parent-child relationships. No more “hidden” processes — all processes, services, and threads are on display, to be terminated, suspended, or restarted one at a time, or in a batch when you highlight multiple entries. Process Hacker is a tool for developers, so it even includes ways to manage real and virtual memory, scan memory for strings, and dump memory contents to a file for analysis. — High Mobley FileZilla In our line of work, we upload and download a lot of files — router images, OS installers, you name it. A good file transfer app is a must. The cross-platform app, FileZilla, provides support for IPv6, FTP, FTPS, and SFTP protocols. Like any good file-transfer app, FileZilla supports resume and transfer, even for files more than 4GB in size. Other features include transfer speed limits, file name filters, directory comparison, remote file search, and editing FileZilla is not just a feature-packed client. The FileZilla project also has a FTP/S file server that runs on Windows platforms. Very handy when you need to serve up files to upgrade a router! — High Mobley Artica More than a great-looking control panel, Artica does the heavy lifting of installing and configuring the various applications needed to create an appliance of your choice: Postfix mail server with all the firewall, antispam, and antivirus trimmings, a Squid caching proxy server, or a NAS device running Samba that can double as a domain controller for your network. Artica is a huge timesaver for sys admins, and it puts reliable Linux servers within reach of millions of small businesses who can’t afford a dedicated admin. You can bolt Artica onto your favorite Linux distro or download an Artica ISO to install Linux with the Artica system preloaded. — High Mobley Open SourceSoftware DevelopmentCareersDatabases