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The industry standard for best practices in system administration is being updated to address today’s challenges. The Practice of System and Network Administration, Third Edition, addresses new challenges in the enterprise, such as “bring your own device,” and new security paradigms, including network access control. This book revolves around six key principles of site design and support practices: simplicity, clarity, generality, automation, communication, and basics first. It examines the major areas of responsibility for system administrators within the context of these principles. The book also discusses change management and revision control, server upgrades, maintenance windows, and service conversions. Chapters are divided into “The Basics” and “The Icing.” “The Basics” discusses the essentials that sysadmins have to get right to avoid problems and added work down the road. “The Icing” deals with the cool things that sysadmins can do to be spectacular, but should only attempt once they’ve mastered the basics. The chapter format has been updated for increased usability: chapter summaries, future speculations sections, and further reading sections have been added, and the end-of-chapter questions have been updated. A lively, witty style and the use of anecdotes and case studies taken from the authors’ personal experience all contribute to make this book an effective, instructive, and yet entertaining read.
Part I: Getting Started
Chapter 1: Climb Out of the Hole
Chapter 2: The Small Batches Principle
Chapter 3: Pets and Cattle
Part II: Workstation Fleet Management
Chapter 4: Workstation Architecture
Chapter 5: Workstation Hardware Strategies
Chapter 6: Workstation Software Life Cycle
Chapter 7: OS Installation Strategies
Chapter 8: Workstation Service Definition
Chapter 9: Workstation Fleet Logistics
Chapter 10: Workstation Standardization
Chapter 11: Onboarding
Part III: Servers
Chapter 12: Server Hardware Strategies
Chapter 13: Server Hardware Features
Chapter 14: Server Hardware Specifications
Part IV: Services
Chapter 15: Service Requirements
Chapter 16: Service Engineering
Chapter 17: Service Resiliancy and Performance
Chapter 18: Service Launch: Fundamentals
Chapter 19: Service Launch: DevOps
Chapter 20: Service Conversions
Chapter 21: Disaster Recovery and Data Integrity
Part V: Infrastructure
Chapter 22: Networks
Chapter 23: Overview of Datacenters
Chapter 24: Running a Datacenter
Chapter 25: Equipping a Datacenter
Chapter 26: Building a Datacenter
Part VI: Helpdesks and Support
Chapter 27: Customer Support
Chapter 28: Handling an Incident Report
Chapter 29: Debugging
Chapter 30: Fixing Things Once
Chapter 31: Documentation
Part VII: Change Processes
Chapter 32: Change Management
Chapter 33: Server Upgrades
Chapter 34: Maintenance Windows
Chapter 35: Centralization: Overview
Chapter 36: Centralization: Recommendations
Chapter 37: Centralization: Transitions
Part VIII: Service Recommendations
Chapter 38: Service Monitoring
Chapter 39: Namespaces
Chapter 40: Email Service
Chapter 41: Print Service
Chapter 42: Data Storage
Chapter 43: Backup and Restore
Chapter 44: Software Repositories
Chapter 45: Web Services
Part IX: Security and Ethics
Chapter 46: Security Policy
Chapter 47: Ethics
Part X: Management Practices
Chapter 48: Organizational Structures
Chapter 49: Perception and Visibility
Chapter 50: Being Happy
Chapter 51: A Guide for Technical Managers
Chapter 52: A Guide for Nontechnical Managers
Chapter 53: Hiring System Administrators
Chapter 54: Firing System Administrators
Part XI: Operational Excellence
Chapter 55: Operational Excellence
Chapter 56: Assessments
Epilogue
Appendix A: What to Do When…
Appendix B: The Many Roles of a System Administrator
Bibliography