Robust remote desktop management across the enterprise

Tivoli Remote Control is easy to

deploy and maintain. Plus it includes

several search facilities for locating

targets, users, and audit and recording

information for a given session,

providing a quick connection to

the target workstation or the audit

information relevant to any given

session.

Firewall support

Tivoli Remote Control supports

firewall security practices and works

over firewalls with the least amount

of intrusion—without requiring the

installation or configuration of any

other components.

Enhanced security

Tivoli Remote Control provides several

security features, including:

• Fulldatastreamencryptionforall

communicationsandfiletransfersbetween

controllersandtargets.

• Enhancedcentralloggingtotracksession

informationincludingcontrollerID,targethost

name,sessionpolicies,andauditableevents

suchasuseracceptance,filetransferoperations,

sessionmodechangesandchattranscripts.

• Automaticsessionlogoffsduetoadministrative

inactivity.

• Aconfigurableoptionthatallowsuserstogrant

remotetakeoversessions.

• Thecapabilitytocaptureavideorecordingof

thesessions.

IBM Tivoli Remote Control

Highlights

Enablesorganizationstoremotely

managethousandsofPCsand

serversfromacentrallocation

AllowsPCproblemstoberesolved

remotely,helpingtoreduce

expensiveonsitevisitsbyITstaff

Enhancessecuritywithcentralized

loggingandsessionvideo

recordings

Offersnewsessionmodes,including

Guidance,FileTransferandChat

Facilitatescollaborationand

escalationprocesses,forimproved

problemresolution

Supportsfirewallsecuritypractices

andworksoverfirewallswiththe

leastamountofintrusion

FeaturesanimprovedJava™

consolethatcanenhanceIT

productivity

ProvidesActiveDirectory/Lightweight

DirectoryAccessProtocol

(AD/LDAP)authenticationanddata

synchronization

Providescustomizablereporting

capabilities

IncludessupportforMicrosoft®

WindowsVista

Centralized control

IBM Tivoli® Remote Control gives

you the ability to remotely support

and control thousands of PCs and

servers—on an enterprise scale—from

a central location. Using the Tivoli

Remote Control administration Web

interface, you can view and control a

remote desktop, including its keyboard

and mouse, anywhere on your network.

You can also chat, transfer files,

remotely guide the users, administer

the policies to be applied to different

users and target groups, and much

more. These features can help provide

more efficient and effective analysis of

user problems from the administrator’s

desktop, without the added cost of

dispatching a technician or relying

on user descriptions over the phone.

Tivoli Remote Control can help deliver

better support, more flexibility, and

richer security, with robust features that

include enhanced central logging and

video capture of the sessions and full

datastream encryption.

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Tivoli Remote Control includes, but is

not limited to, the following session

modes:

Monitor—Lets you view the display

of the remote workstation and monitor

activities.

Guidance—Lets you guide the end

user by providing several graphical

tools such as drawing and highlighting

that can be used to draw in the remote

target and provide specific instructions

to the user without any real intrusion.

System configuration collection—Lets

you collect important information about

the configuration of the remote system

at the click of a button.

File transfer—Lets you transfer files

and directories from the controller to

the target. This feature is available as

a session mode by itself, or as an in-

session feature.

Chat—Lets you establish a direct

communication channel between

administrators and end users, helping

simplify operations. This feature is

available as a session mode by itself,

or as an in-session feature.

Tivoli Remote Control also features a

Web-based user interface that provides

the ability to start a remote control

session from a Web browser, allowing a

virtual help desk to access any remote

session from any location, with 24x7

remote control capability. This Web

interface for Tivoli Remote Control

management and administration also

enables administrators to centrally

administer users and targets, associate

them in groups, and establish the

policies that should apply to sessions

between them.

Improved IT productivity

The Java-based console of Tivoli

Remote Control allows an administrator

to access and take over any remote

system that has the IBM Tivoli Remote

Control agent installed, from any

system that can access the Tivoli

Remote Control server. This improved

console helps speed up quality service

delivery with easy-to-use menus, direct

shortcuts to system options, recording

and auditing capabilities, remote

system information at the click of a

button, and much more.

APP Server

TargetControllerPeer-to-peer session traffic

Controller logs on to RC GUI

Audit Recording

Target reports at startup and state changes

User and GroupSynchronization

User Authentication

Audit Recording

Session Parametersare pulled from the server and based on the

target/user group relationship

User Roles Audit Records

TargetProfiles

Active Directory,Tivoli Directory

Server and other LDAPv3 compliant

products

IBM Tivoli Remote Control allows you to monitor and control thousands of PCs and servers from a central location, with easy access to information on targets, users and session activity.

�

Centralized session tracking

Tivoli Remote Control provides

centralized session tracking, which

can help you create statistical, service-

level agreement or security reports.

You also can customize the target to

log events into Microsoft Windows®

Event Logger or into Linux® system

logs, including the date and time

of connection and disconnection,

controller and target user names,

policies applied to the session, type

of session established (and any

changes made to it during the session),

the network addresses of the target and

controller computers, chat transcripts,

and video recording for the session,

if available.

Quick system connectivity

To help you connect quickly to the

right target, Tivoli Remote Control

provides a Web interface that allows

access to an automatically updated

and searchable list of target system

hostnames and IP addresses. You can

establish a remote session by simply

clicking the target. Before a target can

be accessed by any user in the system,

a relationship has to be established

between the user group and the target

group, along with the policies that will

apply to the session specified for this

relationship. Only an administrator can

modify the policies that apply to a

given relationship.

Collaboration—Lets you invite other

participants to an existing session in

order to obtain further support or for

training purposes.

Reporting—Lets you create and

customize existing reports to monitor

Tivoli Remote Control usage and

generate other statistics relevant to

your organization.

A session mode switch allows you

to change from one session mode to

another without having to restart the

session, as long as the policies allow

it. Users can change session status or

terminate a session at any time.

Policy-based authorization

To protect access to a workstation

session, Tivoli Remote Control provides

policy-based functionality that lets you

establish policies that are centrally

defined, managed and stored. Policies

are applied to a user/target group

relationship.

Multiple-language support

Tivoli Remote Control supports

Chinese, Czech, English, French,

German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese,

Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian

and Spanish. This multiple-language

support includes instances where the

administrator and the end user have

different keyboards. For example,

an administrator using a Japanese

keyboard can support an end user with

an English keyboard.

Tivoli Remote Control in action

In addition to providing robust remote

control functionality, Tivoli Remote

Control has advanced features that

enhance your security and compliance

efforts, support your training program

and help reduce your service delivery

costs. The following scenarios show

how Tivoli Remote Control can address

these business needs.

�

Facilitating the training of help

desk personnel

Proper training of new help desk

agents is critical in order to prevent

mistakes that cause compliance

problems or business interruptions.

On-the-job experience is often an

important part of the training program.

During this period, it may be necessary

to limit an agent’s authorization rights

until he or she is fully trained. It can

also be valuable to capture the actions

an agent takes during a help session,

so that the actions can be evaluated

later. Tivoli Remote Control provides

the capabilities to support these

training needs.

• Authorizationscanbedifferentiateddepending

ontheindividualagent’sskilllevel,reducingthe

riskofmistakesandbusinessinterruptions.

• Helpdesksessionscanberecordedand

replayedfortrainingpurposes,helping

organizationsprovideatrainingexperience

thatiscustomizedfortheindividual.Targeted

feedbackhelpsreducetrainingtimeandcosts.

Creating an audit trail of access to

sensitive information

End users who call in to the help

desk may have sensitive data on their

computers, such as financial data,

human resources records, or medical

files. It is important for an organization

to be able to prove that sensitive data

has not been compromised—that

unauthorized help desk personnel

have not had access to restricted

data during a support session where

the remote control feature was used

to access a user’s computer. Tivoli

Remote Control supports compliance

efforts and helps keep access to

sensitive data secure.

• Securitypoliciescanbesettoensurethat

allsessionsarerecordedautomaticallyforaudit

purposes,orthatsessionsonspecificend-user

machinesarerecorded.Asaresult,anaudit

trailisreadilyavailableforcomplianceor

securitychecks.

• Policiescanalsobesettolimittheactionsthat

canbetakenonanend-usermachine,sothat

machineswithsensitivedatacanbeprotected.

• Auditlogsarekeptbothcentrallyandlocallyto

helppreventtampering,addinganotherdegree

ofauditstrength.

Reducing service delivery costs through

efficient problem solving

In today’s complex enterprise

application environments, it can be

difficult for an end user to determine

the root cause of a problem. After

an initial assessment by a help

desk agent, it may be necessary to

collaborate with peers or experts, or to

escalate problem resolution to another

agent. Tivoli Remote Control enables

enhanced collaboration, facilitating

problem solving processes and helping

reduce service delivery costs.

• Helpdeskagentscangivecontrolofaproblem

toanotheragent,orrevokecontrolasnecessary.

Thishand-overcanbedonewithoutre-opening

thesession,expeditingproblemresolution.

• Multiplehelpdeskagentscanusebuilt-in

collaborationcapabilitiestoresolvecomplex

problemsthatrequireinputfrommultiple

sources,providingtheuserwithaseamless

problemresolutionexperience.

�

Supported platforms:

Remote Control Server

• IBM AIX® 5.2 or 5.3

• Sun Solaris 10

• Red Hat Linux 4.0 (Intel® x86)

• Red Hat Linux 5.0 (Intel x86 and AMD/eMT 64 bit)

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (Intel x86 and AMD/eMT 64 bit)

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (Intel x86 and AMD/eMT 64 bit)

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard R2 (32 and 64 bits)

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 (32 and 64 bits)

Remote Control Target

• Windows 2000 Server

• Windows 2000 Advanced Server

• Microsoft Windows XP

• Windows Server 2003 Standard R2 (32 and 64 bits)

• Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 (32 and 64 bits)

• Windows Vista

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 (Intel x86)

• Red Hat Enterprise 5.0 (Intel x86 and AMD/eMT 64 bit)

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (Intel x86)

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (Intel x86 and AMD/eMT 64 bit)

Remote Control Controller

Any platforms that support either of the following JRE versions:

• Sun 1.5 or 1.6

• IBM 1.4 or 1.5

And either of the following browser versions:

• Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or 2

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or 7

Other requirements:

Tivoli Remote Control 5.1 offers a default, out of the box, installation that does

not require any other software. This installation will deploy Tivoli Remote Control 5.1 server

on Embedded WebSphere® Application Server 6.1 and Derby 10.2. Alternatively, manual

installation is supported for the following middleware.

Application Server

• IBM WebSphere Application Server 6.1

Database Systems

• IBM DB2® v8.2 FP3

• DB2 v9.1

• Oracle 9

IBM Tivoli Remote Control 5.1 at a glance

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2007

IBM Corporation Software Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A.

Produced in the United States of America 9-07 All Rights Reserved

IBM, the IBM logo, AIX, DB2, Tivoli and WebSphere are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both.

Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both.

Microsoft, Windows and Windows NT are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

References in this publication to IBM products and services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates.

No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from IBM Corporation.

Product data has been reviewed for accuracy as of the date of initial publication. Product data is subject to change without notice. Any statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.

THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS DISTRIBUTED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. IBM EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements (e.g. IBM Customer Agreement, Statement of Limited Warranty, International Program License Agreement, etc.) under which they are provided.

The customer is responsible for ensuring compliance with legal requirements. It is the customer’s sole responsibility to obtain advice of competent legal counsel as to the identification and interpretation of any relevant laws and regulatory requirements that may affect the customer’s business and any actions the customer may need to take to comply with such laws. IBM does not provide legal advice or represent or warrant that its services or products will ensure that the customer is in compliance with any law or regulation.

TID10434-USEN-00

For more information

To learn more about IBM Tivoli

Remote Control, contact your IBM

representative or IBM Business Partner,

or visit ibm.com/tivoli

About Tivoli software from IBM

Tivoli software provides a set of

offerings and capabilities in support of

IBM Service Management, a scalable,

modular approach used to deliver

more efficient and effective services

to your business. Helping meet the

needs of any size business, Tivoli

software enables you to deliver service

excellence in support of your business

objectives through integration and

automation of processes, workflows

and tasks. The security-rich, open

standards-based Tivoli service

management platform is complemented

by proactive operational management

solutions that provide end-to-end

visibility and control. It is also backed

by world-class IBM Services, IBM

Support and an active ecosystem of

IBM Business Partners. Tivoli customers

and business partners can also

leverage each other’s best practices by

participating in independently run IBM

Tivoli User Groups around the world—

visit www.tivoli-ug.org