UNIX System Management Primer Plus

Unix System Management Primer PlusAuthor Bio Jeff Horwitz has been a system administrator for the past eight years and is currently the Manager of Production Systems for TargetRx, Inc., a pharmaceutical market research company. Prior to joining TargetRx, he worked for a national Internet service provider, a university, and a software company, giving him unique insights into each type of organization. He is an active member of SAGE and Usenix, and he has written several widely used Perl modules. Jeff has a Bachelor of Science in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan and is a Sun Certified System Administrator.

(NOTE: Each chapter concludes with a Summary and Review Questions.)

Introduction.


How This Book Is Organized. For Your Attention.

I. STARTING FROM SCRATCH.

1. Planning Your Architecture.


Defining the Project Scope. Classifying Your Systems. Collecting Specifications. Assessing Compatibility Needs. Choosing Hardware and Software. Evaluating Vendor Support Contracts.

2. Designing the Data Center Infrastructure.


Should You Build Your Own Data Center? Controlling the Data Center Environment. Choosing Raised or Fixed Flooring. Choosing and Using Equipment Racks. Securing Access to Your Data Center. Power Management. Out-of-Band Management for Maintenance and Repair. Emergency Remote Access.

3. Deploying Your Systems.


The Ordering Process. Receiving Shipments. Recording Your Deployment Procedures. Hardware Installation. Installing Software. Handing Off to the Users.

II. MAINTENANCE.

4. Testing Your Systems.


The Testing Process. Unit Testing. Compatibility Testing. Load Testing. Regression Testing. Alpha and Beta Testing.

5. Support Administration.


Matching Technical Support Infrastructure to Business Size and Customer Needs. Developing On-Call Procedures. Escalation Procedures. Managing Communications Between Varying Levels of Expertise. Support Tools. Advertising Your Support Department.

6. Monitoring Services.


What Is Monitoring? Host Monitoring. Network Monitoring. Service Monitoring. Logging. Log Management. Log Monitoring. Internal Versus External Monitoring. Monitoring Applications.

7. Patches, Upgrades, and Decommissions.


Preimplementation Testing in a Sandbox Environment. Patching Operating Systems. Hardware Upgrades. Operating System Upgrades. Firmware Upgrades. Decommissioning Services.

8. Service Outages.


Types of Outages. Scheduled Maintenance. Unscheduled Outages. Partial Service Outages. Complete Outages and Degraded Service. Distributed Service Outages. Third-Party Outages. Maintenance Windows. Monitoring Compliance with Service Level Agreements. Observing Production Values. Outage Procedures. Root Cause Analysis.

9. Preparing for Disaster Recovery.


What Is an IT Disaster? Power Outages. Physical and Environmental Disasters. Managing Data Loss. Formulating a Disaster Recovery Plan. Disaster Drills.

III. A WELL-OILED MACHINE.

10. Providing High Availability in Your Unix System.


Providing High Availability. Techniques for Providing High Availability. Redundancy. Failover. Load Balancing. Data Redundancy Using RAID. Data Redundancy Using Split Mirrors. Data Redundancy Using Snapshots. Using Multiple Network Paths. Using Server Clusters. Location Redundancy. High-Availability Options for Internet Services.

11. Performance Tuning and Capacity Planning .


Gauging CPU Performance and Capacity. Tuning CPU Performance. Planning for CPU Resources. Gauging Storage Performance and Capacity. Tuning Disk and File System Performance. Planning for Storage Needs. Gauging Memory Performance and Capacity. Tuning Memory and Swap Performance. Planning for Memory and Swap Capacity. Gauging Network Performance and Capacity. Tuning Network Performance. Planning for Future Network Capacity.

12. Process Automation.


Scheduling Tools. Automating Root Logins. Automating File Synchronization. Automating Local Configurations with cfengine. Automating Temporary Space Management. Automating Log Maintenance. Using logrotate as a Generic Log Rotation Tool.

13. Implementing System Security.


Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting. Types of Security Used in Unix Systems. Understanding Least Privilege. Separation of Services. Managing Root Accounts. Delegating Authority. Exploits and Attacks. Securing Data with Encryption. Alternative Authentication Methods. Simple Ways to Improve Your Security. Staying Up-to-Date Through Security Forums.

IV. The Human Aspect .

14. Internal Communication.


Writing System Documentation. Change Management. Configuration Management with Revision Control Tools. System Activity Schedules. Naming Conventions.

15. Interacting with Users.


Types of Users. Communicating with Users. Dealing with Problem Users. Preventing User Problems. Dealing with Remote User Problems.

16. Computing Policies and Agreements.


Acceptable Usage Policies. User Rights and Responsibilities. Security Policies. Security Waivers. Using Implicit Agreements.

V. APPENDIXES.

Appendix A: References.
Appendix B: Answers to Questions.
Index.