Zack Rippy

When I first started administering Windows servers several years ago, it became apparent that there were many holes in the standard Windows Administration “toolkit.” These holes were more than plugged by Mark Russinovich’s excellent suite of tools at his Sysinternals site. This guy knows his stuff and made truly incredible tools available for download, along with their source code. Over the years, they have become indispensable to me. I was more than a bit disappointed to hear that Microsoft had acquired the whole suite. I assumed that eventually Microsoft would bundle them in a commercial package for “the extra low price of $99.99.” So far though, Microsoft has kept the tools free (sans source code, naturally) and distributes them via their TechNet site. They also apparently recognize that Mark himself was one of the reasons the tools are held in such high regard. He is a trusted member of the IT community who was always on the forefront, giving users and administrators the tools that should have been part of Windows from the beginning. Mark is still actively involved with Sysinternals, via Microsoft, and maintains a blog over at his tools’ new home. Though I am still disappointed that Microsoft now owns it all, I assume that Mark was well-compensated, and he deserves it. The Sysinternals suite is still an invaluable resource for system administrators and I hope Microsoft allows it to continue to flourish.

Sysinternals Home

Mark Russinovich’s Blog

Must Have: PsTools

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 7:38 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.