MKS Buyers Guide MKS Buyers Guide

The following table will help you select the appropriate product for your needs. If you have additional questions, your sales representative would be happy to help you.

Developer Related Issues

MKS Toolkit development products provide solutions in the following areas:

User Compatibility

The Need The Solution
Run UNIX shell, Perl or AWK scripts on Windows The MKS Toolkit product family contains a Korn shell, a C shell, Perl, Tcl, and AWK. It is ideal for all your Windows scripting needs.
Query and control jobs and processes The MKS Toolkit product family contains a set of commands and utilities for the manipulation of all Win32 processes (i.e. ps, kill).
Perform UNIX-compatible backups and exchange tapes and data between UNIX and Windows The MKS Toolkit product family includes a complete System Backup Suite of file archiving and system backup utilities. Check out the MKS Toolkit Backup and Tape Handling Solutions Guide for more informatin.
Use UNIX utilities on Windows The MKS Toolkit product family contains more than 400 utilities, including Korn, bash, and C shells, Perl, sed, awk, find, grep, etc.
Use your UNIX build environment on Windows MKS Toolkit development products have all the tools you need to preserve your UNIX build environment, including Korn and C shells, make, gmake*, imake, lex/yacc, sed, awk, Tcl, Perl, cc, cxx, f77, f90, and hundreds of others.

Platform Interoperability

The Need The Solution
Display X Windows applications on Windows Both MKS Toolkit for Interoperability and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers contains high-performance, OpenGL-capable X servers.
Remotely administer your Windows machines The MKS Toolkit product family allows you to easily access remote UNIX, Linux, and Windows systems with a complete Connectivity Suite, including such tools as Secure Shell, Remote Shell, Telnet, FTP, and xterm. Check out the MKS Toolkit Connectivity Solutions Guide for more information.
Develop all your applications from a single machine MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers has the technology to let you combine all your development needs into a single desktop machine, giving you reduced hardware costs, reduced cost of ownership, simple and simultaneous access to your development environment and your desktop productivity tools, a development environment you can put on a laptop and take home, and more space on your desk.

Application Portability and Cross-Platform Development

The Need The Solution
Maintain a single source code baseline across UNIX and Windows MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers lets you use your same code for both UNIX and Windows. In addition it provides a complete Connectivity Suite, including such tools as Secure Shell, Remote Shell, Telnet, FTP, and xterm to allow you to access your source code from either Windows or UNIX/Linux systems. Check out the MKS Toolkit Connectivity Solutions Guide for more information.
Port UNIX C, C++, or Fortran code to Windows Customers have successfully ported millions and millions of lines of code to Windows, with almost no modifications using MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers.
Web-enable your application MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers has tools and tutorials to help you modernize your legacy application by Web-enabling it.
Modernize your application MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers has the tools and tutorials you need to create components from your legacy code, such that they can be integrated with other applications (e.g., Microsoft Excel), combined with other components to form new applications, and deployed anywhere on your network.

System Administration Related Issues

MKS Toolkit system administration products are built on a solid foundation of robust tools and engines that have been optimized for building best-of-breed system administration solutions. Whether you are administering a Windows environment or one that mixes Windows and legacy systems, these tools and engines let you effectively manage that environment.

The Need The Solution
Monitor the availability of network resources and applications MKS AlertCentre is a complete solution for monitoring, alerting and job scheduling. AlertCentre can monitor your mission-critical systems and applications 24 hours a day, seven days a week to provide you with the peace of mind of knowing that your network, applications, and Internet/Intranet-based information systems are running normally.
Automatically run jobs, tasks, and events The MKS Toolkit product family includes a complete Task Scheduling Suite to help automate the routine running of scripts and processes to simplify tasks and reduce errors. This new scheduler serves as an interface to the Windows Task Scheduler service and has both a graphical interface as well as a command-line interface that will model the existing UNIX utilities cron, at, and batch. Check out the MKS Toolkit Task Scheduling Solutions Guide for more information.
Access remote machines in a secure environment The MKS Toolkit product family allows you to easily access remote UNIX, Linux, and Windows systems with a complete Connectivity Suite, including such tools as Secure Shell, Remote Shell, Telnet, FTP, and xterm. Check out the MKS Toolkit Connectivity Solutions Guide for more information.
Automate system backups The MKS Toolkit product family includes a complete System Backup Suite of file archiving and system backup utilities. Check out the MKS Toolkit Backup and Tape Handling Solutions Guide for more information.
Administering Windows systems through WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) The MKS Toolkit Perl scripting language can be used, via the COM interface to WMI, to access and manipulate system configuration information and components. (see the MKS Toolkit Evaluation Guide for System Administrators for more information)
Monitor SNMP aware network devices The MKS Toolkit product family includes the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) utility suite which enables you to query network devices (routers, workstations, servers, etc.) and trap events.
System and event log handling The MKS Toolkit eventlog utility and Perl scripting language can be used to filter and manipulate the Windows event logs. (see the MKS Toolkit Evaluation Guide for System Administrators for more information)
Add, edit, or delete multiple user accounts MKS Toolkit for System Administrators includes many commands for the manipulation of user and group accounts (i.e. userinfo, groupinfo, member). (read how to manipulate user accounts from this white paper)
Administer your Windows machine from the command line The MKS Toolkit products contain all the familiar system administration utilities from UNIX and many new, Windows-specific utilities, such as those for manipulating access control lists.
Start and stop local and remote system services The MKS Toolkit products offer the service command which allows you to start, query, and stop Windows services. In conjunction with the Connectivity Suite you have complete control over the local or remote system services running on your network. Check out the MKS Toolkit Connectivity Solutions Guide for more information.
Copy permissions between objects, clone directory trees, create and control Windows desktops, shortcuts, and the Windows registry The MKS Toolkit products contain many tools and utilities, such as chacl, registry, and shortcut to allow you to perform many routine configuration tasks.
Use your existing customized UNIX system administration tools on Windows Extend the capabilities of the MKS Toolkit products by porting your custom UNIX tools to Windows. MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers allows you to easily build and deploy these UNIX utilities to Windows.

Availability Monitoring, Alerting, and Job Scheduling

MKS AlertCentre is a complete solution for monitoring, alerting and job scheduling. AlertCentre can monitor your mission-critical systems and applications 24 hours a day, seven days a week to provide you with the peace of mind of knowing that your network, applications, and Internet/Intranet-based information systems are running normally.

The Need The Solution
Insure that network resources are up and running MKS AlertCentre includes pre-defined monitor types (HTTP, FTP, SMTP, TCP Port, NetBIOS Share, DNS, Remote Access, and Ping) which will alert you to problems and allow you to kick off corrective actions insuring the availability of critical systems.
Keep control of system resources and performance MKS AlertCentre includes pre-defined monitor types (Disk Space, CPU Utilization, Memory Utilization, and Performance Counter) to insure that your systems are operating within acceptable tollerances.
Maintain availability of applications MKS AlertCentre includes pre-defined monitor types (Windows Service, Web Page, ODBC Database, Windows Event Log, and Application Log) enabling you to ensure your mission-critical applications are available to authorized users and that the content has not been tampered with.
Insure that your backup power supply is ready to serve in emergencies MKS AlertCentre APC UPS Wizard will create a series of lower level monitors that combine to give you the complete coverage needed to monitor battery use by the UPS and let you know when the battery needs to be replaced.
Keep your cool in the server room MKS AlertCentre SNMP monitors can perform simple yet powerful tasks like monitoring the temperature in your server room to insure that your business critical machines don't overheat.