I was asked today to write a program that will have a central database that will manage the usernames and passwords of the remote servers our company supports.

My boss wants me to create a client app that allows a technician to see a list of our servers (from DB) and to be able to click on the server and have it auto login.

This app will have an admin backend that will allow my boss to turn on/off want servers each tech can connect to. the point is to have the passwords remain secret so every tech doesn't have a list of usernames and passwords and we wouldn't have to change all the passwords (hundreds) everytime an employee is fired or quits.

Is this possible. Some of the servers use RDP to login and some use VPN. Also some of the servers are 2003 and some are 2000.

Any advice and.or guidenece would be much appreciated.

Justin Bezanson
www.aspnetguy.com

After doing some research I found an open source C# RDP client that should prove very useful.

It is looking more and more like I will have to write my own RDp client (or mod the one I found) to get the results I want.

Another question, is it possible to modify Active Directory through an RDP connection (programmatically)?

Justin Bezanson
www.aspnetguy.com

What do you mean modifiy AD through RDP?

Are you asking if it is possible to send commands through an RDP connection to a remote AD? If this is the case, I don't think that that is possible (assuming that the program you are executing is on the local machine as opposed to the pc that you are connected to) because an RDT connection doesn't make your local pc part of the remote network (as opposed to a VPN connection).

The only way this may be possible is if you wrote an application and placed it on the remote server that could then be accessed when someone connects to the machine via RDP.

hth.

"The one language all programmers understand is profanity."

thanks, that does help

So this may be possible with VPN?

What I mean is I was also asked if it was possible for this program I was asked to write if they could change passwords on the remote server from their local PC.

Justin Bezanson
www.aspnetguy.com

Over a VPN connection yes this may be possible since, at that time, your local PC is part of the remote network but the only way you could get this to work over RDP is if a user connected to a machine through RDP and the machine they were connecting to had an application on it that connected to that networks P/SDC.

hth.

"The one language all programmers understand is profanity."

I think what you are trying to do is emulate what windows integrated security with Active Directory already does. You should be able to very easily set up your users and then give access to the servers that they need access to using the security model already supplied with windows. I don't see why you need to write any code to accomplish this goal. Am I missing something here?

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They are remote servers, you need some sort of remote connection, its not so much a question about user authentication.

"The one language all programmers understand is profanity."