Alternative to PuTTY
Alternative to PuTTY
For Putty? Use PuttyCM to set up Cisco switches. Your current setup includes a TFTP server and a PowerShell script that helps Cisco find its config file on the network. In the future, you'll build a PowerShell function to keep 99% of those files consistent across the network.
It seems like you're looking for a way to move forward smoothly. Once you're comfortable, consider seeking a job in a well-paying role, which might help you overlook your existing abilities. Career growth can feel unpredictable, though.
I completed the same task previously. I spent every bit on mobaxterm—it was worth it. I couldn’t locate an alternative with a comparable feature set that performed just as well as mobaxt.
I don’t rely on Putty, yet I recall the Pro version offers many customizer tools for similar tasks. A fast search suggests you can import from Putty without issues https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4894...-mobaxterm
It’s not necessary to rely solely on SSH for security and convenience. You can set up your environment to support syntax highlighting without changing your connection method.
It’s okay to have a clear selection of servers to select from. Less than ten is fine, though it can become frustrating when scaling up.
I don’t have more than ten servers to manage, but I store all the details (IP, user, port, keys, etc.) in my SSH config and then connect via ssh host1. If you need to list all hosts from your config, you can use an alias like this: alias sshhosts="sed -rn 's/^\s*Host\s+(.*)\s*/\1' ~/.ssh/config". Make sure it works on Windows too.
On Windows 10 you can install Bash, which makes things more flexible. You probably need to remember the host aliases you set, but it shouldn’t be a big issue. I think there’s a way to list all aliases and then run commands like cat on the whole config. For switches, it would be handy if you could log in without typing them repeatedly—something like a shortcut or a quick menu. For bigger setups, organizing things with folders and "folders" for each level (like fourth floor) would help. It would make navigation simpler and more intuitive. The goal is to simplify the process while keeping the method you mentioned useful.
Windows doesn't work with it natively, but you can adapt it using Ubuntu on Windows. This adds unnecessary complexity. The main concern is organizing multiple devices. With a few devices, aliases and cat are useful, but when you have over 200 devices from different companies using similar names, things get messy. Convenience matters too. Setting up the desired configuration would require rewriting MobaXTerm entirely. I need more than just a simple ssh command; formatting the output is tedious to do manually. Coloring results are frustrating since Cisco devices don’t support color. I’d have to script it myself using bash and regex, which is possible but time-consuming and error-prone. Automatic login is another pain—passing credentials directly isn’t feasible because logins often require multiple steps. So I’d need a script to handle password input automatically, but hiding the password in the code adds another layer of difficulty. Clear text passwords on my system become a significant problem.