In today’s complicated IT technology stack, more and more people have opted in more diversified technology stacks. Even Microsoft’s own cloud service Azure acknowledges this trend and supports to host multiple flavours of Linux on it’s Windows dominant stack.
If you need to manage both Windows and Linux via SSH terminals, MobaXterm is an excellent tool for the job. It has combined tools like PuTTY, Cygwin, FileZila, WinSCP and Windows Remote Desktop (RDP) all into one coherent unified app. MobaXterm offers a free home edition which already includes plenty of great features out of the box.
MobaXterm by default shows a list of SFTP folders for any SSH session to a Linux server. Makes it transfer file easier by just drag and drop. You also can access Cygwin file system from MobaXterm without ever launch Cygwin itself. The catch is, some command line method might not be resolve in the basic home edition.
Some of the out-of-the-box features include support for existing PuTTY’s Saved Sessions. Another built-in feature is the ability to remember password on connected SSH session. This is the number one feature why I love MobaXterm, yes you should use private and public key SSH authentication whenever possible but when those aren’t done MobaXterm will save the password and remember it for next time. It will feel as if it is doing SSH key authentication.
Enough SSH sessions, MobaXterm also supports Window’s RDP and cross-platform VNC remote access.
Similar as how MobaXterm remembers SSH session, this also applies to RDP and VNC it remembers previous logged in session so you can save time and avoid frustrations on the wrong password.
Verdict
MobaXterm is a really nice all-in-one type of utility for managing all your remote access sessions. If you are used to another tool for doing the same work it might take the time to get used to the new shortcuts, etc. The best feature I liked is the ability to seamlessly remember the password as you start a new session. So next time around, you don’t need to find your cheat sheet or dig in your brain on `what was the password puzzle`. It has a free version which offers enough for personal use, and if you want to use it at work, consider purchase the licensed Pro edition.