What utilites on their Windows PC should one get when dealing with Linux servers

GNU tar / gzip / binutils / gcc / RPM / etc ..................

Ditch Windoze and run Lunix on your own system :-]
(Or you can dual boot if you just must have Windows )

Alternately, go to http://www.cygwin.com - cygwin does a passable impression of turning Windows into *nix.

Well thanks for the reply but its not practical

I guess I will wait and see what some windows users are using on their computer in terms of Linux utilities that help in using the files for administrating their servers

for the most part, you will need ssh (putty for windows does a good job here), telnet (hyperterminal will do the job until you setup and verify ssh), and an ftp (cute, bulletproof).

Those are the basic day to day tools for admining a server, i'm sure others have other suggestions.

TFArchive

Putty can use both telnet and ssh, so there's no need to bother with HyperTerminal.

I use ssh from ssh.com, it isn't that expensive and an Academic version is available for free. With it you get a decent FTP client that runs over SSL and is as secure as can be. One of the biggest problems with FTP is that everything is transfered in clear text; not the case with SSH/FTP.