We have not said much about Enterprise Remote Control since Beta 1. That is because we have had our heads down in our keyboards busy improving and fixing.
Here is the purchase link:
To get a detailed look at what this product is all about, check out my announcement of beta 1:
http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/2010/08/enterprise-remote-control-beta-1/
I want to give a shout out to Matthew P. He has been invaluable in his testing, and reporting to us. Many of these bugs would have been much more difficult to find without beta testers like him.
Chris G – Thank you for being so patient with those reflector lockups. You were not the only one, but you were the only one to respond so quickly and help us resolve it asap.
Download Links
Reflector Server (Build 1.0.0.59)
Reflector Agent (Build: 5.332)
Reflector Client (Build: 5.0.0.123)
Please visit the Beta 1 announcement for installation instructions.
What have we fixed?
-Reflector lockup. This was an issue with testers that had over 30 computers. It took us quite some time to resolve this problem, but it has been fixed. We appreciate the patients of those dealing with it. Thanks for all your help.
-Reflector memory footprint – We have reduced the amount of memory needed for the reflector in half. It was already pretty low. Now it is even lower than before. With about 200 connections you might see 10 to 14 MB of memory usage – equal to less than a single session of FireFox or IE running!
-When no port was specified for the reflector, the agent never reported to the server. For example, in the setup wizard you provide your reflector host name like this: ref.domain.com – instead of this ref.domain.com:443. It would zip through the wizard with no problem…but then the agent would never report. Fixed
-Speed improvement on Vista and Windows 7. In the old version it did not disable the glass effect. It is almost impossible to get a good refresh rate with these turned on. (Notice that MS remote desktop disables these too while connected). It will automatically turn it off while you are connected, substantially improving viewer speed.
-Automatic install for non reflector agent not working on 64 bit machines. Even though this is a beta for our reflector, these binaries are for our standard edition product too. Lets say you try to automatically install the agent to a host on your network that is 64 bit machine…in beta 1 it would fail. Fixed
-Administrator access – When you install the agent it does not add any local user access. If you try to connect to the machine directly, instead of the reflector, it would keep asking for a password. We have set it to add windows administrators for local connections. This will be a configuration option on the reflector in a future beta release.
-Viewer crashing during disconnect. This was a tough one. Thanks to our persistent beta testers we were able to resolve it. Usually it would happen if you left the viewer open over night. Close the session, and bam it would crash. Fixed
What is new in this beta?
The biggest change in this beta is an automatic update feature for the agent (the host). We had a few setbacks, but now it is running smooth. Our first attempt included using a standard setup package that would run in the background. This turned out to be too rigid, and did not allow for failures – it would kill the service and never come back during a failed install.
This forced us to go back to the drawing board and build a custom packager from scratch. It was worth it. Now, the automatic update will periodically check and see if there is an update. When it finds one it will attempt to update the agent. It will keep all of the old files in place until that it is sure that the upgrade was successful. If there is a failure, it will roll back the install and bring it right back to the version it had before. That way there is no interruption in connectivity.
This means you can install on a wider set of systems without having to push that agent out again when newer versions are released.
Currently you cannot control the update process. I know that this will be troublesome for some of you – not to worry…before the final version is released you will be able to control this process from the reflector, and choose from these options:
-Never update
-Prompt to update only when connecting to a host
-Automatically update without prompting.
This will allow you to set an update mode that fits within your policies.
What are we working on in Beta 3?
Currently the software is running quite smooth, it gives us a chance to add some improvements:
-The find computers window will have a way to view only specific sets of computers. For example, just computers registered with the reflector, or just those that it found locally on your domain, or even remove the offline computers from view
-Settings from the reflector. We will add the ability to change global settings for the agent on the reflector. What would these be? Showing the tray icon when the service is active, or automatic update settings for the agent.
-Code re-factoring on the agent side. We are going to dig deep into the agent code and look for some speed improvement. We also have long term plans of supporting other platforms. This will not make it into the final release, but we need to build the foundation for OSX. iOS, Windows 7 Phone, and Android support. In addition to that, this strengthened foundation will include the framework for file transfer and many other goodies. Much of it will not be visible, but the improvement will make for much shorter development cycles and allow us to get cool features to you more quickly.
-Improved computer listing on the reflector. Currently the computer listing on the reflector is hard to navigate. We are going to improve this section to make it easier to identify machines that are offline, and no longer used.
When will beta 3 be released?
Unknown. We know it will be less than 120 days, since that is the limit set into the viewer right now. This keeps old betas from floating around. We will not move to the next beta until we are confident that all of the bugs reported by you are fixed, and it is working smoothly.
What about a distribution tool?
We are working on this. I know that many of you have asked us about it. It will get released before the final version
Any questions, comments please send them to us at support@intelliadmin.com
Thanks again for all of your support, and help making this an awesome product.
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