ServerControl for the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Windows Servers

The company behind both FileBrowser and NetPortal reviewed on this site, Stratospherix, has a third app in the stable which has a few pieces of core functionality covered on this site a few times.  ServerControl is Stratospherix’s third application that combines some of the file browsing capabilities of the company’s other applications, but then adds support for remote reboot and shutdown, as well as the administration of Windows Server services through a simple GUI.

Features

First, is the ability to remotely shutdown and reboot a Windows server. This is not IPMI 2.0 like capability which is done at the baseboard management level, instead this is from within in the operating system.  This is an important capability and similar to either ASoft’s AutoExit or using DOS commands/ RDP for shutdown also covered previously.

ServerControl has a free version that lets a user shutdown a server and also view service states.

This may be adequate for some users, however, I would offer that in most cases one would remotely want to be able to start/ stop/ pause services (for example if a mail service hangs) or reboot the server so it comes back online after a short period of time. For this, Stratospherix has a ServerControl Pro ($4.99 in-app purchase) that adds those capabilities as well as a basic file browsing application similar to NetPortal.

Conclusion

ServerControl is a fairly simple application that works well. I do think that FileBrowser is the gem in Stratospherix’s stable, but for users that need the ability to start/ stop services and Windows servers remotely, ServerControl works as stated. The free app is a handy way to shut down servers en-route for maintenance because oftentimes Windows servers require a bit of time to shutdown while various services are running.