Good SysAdmin IT Tools?

[hellfire88]

Hey guys, I have a general question. Some of you probably work in IT so I figured I'd ask. We have a surplus in budget which we have to spend by tomorrow...

Can you recommend any good SysAdmin IT tools that would help with say:

- Mixed brand infrastructure management
- Network monitoring
- Something to help to assess ongoing threat such as virus, network attack, etc.
- User self-service, etc.

The only thing is, each item/license has to cost under $900, but we can buy several (weird, I know). For example, some useful small tool such as Softerra LDAP Manager:

http://www.ldapadministrator.com/

Or some file/folder/registry comparison tool:
https://www.scootersoftware.com/

Basically anything that would make an System Administrator's or HelpDesk's life a bit easier.

If I can't find anything, I'll just buy a bunch of Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Project, and Microsoft Visio licenses for the team I guess. Thanks in advance.

 

[XavierMace]

The tools I use are pretty much split between free and way more than $900.

Desktop Support tools:
bluescreenview, CrystalDiskInfo, Notepad++, ProcessExplorer, RevoUninstaller, Angry IP, LAN Speedtest, mRemote, Wireshark.

Monitoring:
Full Solarwinds Orion suite (you're not going to be remotely close to under $900 for this)

Solarwinds has a variety of free tools, I'd look into them. If you don't have a lab, sysadmins could make good use of VMWare Workstation license for testing sandboxes.