Linux Administration Best Practices

Gain an understanding of system administration that will remain applicable throughout your career and understand why tasks are done rather than how to do them

Key Features

• Deploy, secure, and maintain your Linux system in the best possible way
• Discover best practices to implement core system administration tasks in Linux
• Explore real-world decisions, tasks, and solutions involved in Linux system administration

Book Description

Linux is a well-known, open source Unix-family operating system that is the most widely used OS today. Linux looks set for a bright future for decades to come, but system administration is rarely studied beyond learning rote tasks or following vendor guidelines. To truly excel at Linux administration, you need to understand how these systems work and learn to make strategic decisions regarding them.

Linux Administration Best Practices helps you to explore best practices for efficiently administering Linux systems and servers. This Linux book covers a wide variety of topics from installation and deployment through to managing permissions, with each topic beginning with an overview of the key concepts followed by practical examples of best practices and solutions. You'll find out how to approach system administration, Linux, and IT in general, put technology into proper business context, and rethink your approach to technical decision making. Finally, the book concludes by helping you to understand best practices for troubleshooting Linux systems and servers that'll enable you to grow in your career as well as in any aspect of IT and business.

By the end of this Linux administration book, you'll have gained the knowledge needed to take your Linux administration skills to the next level.

What you will learn

• Find out how to conceptualize the system administrator role
• Understand the key values of risk assessment in administration
• Apply technical skills to the IT business context
• Discover best practices for working with Linux specific system technologies
• Understand the reasoning behind system administration best practices
• Develop out-of-the-box thinking for everything from reboots to backups to triage
• Prioritize, triage, and plan for disasters and recoveries
• Discover the psychology behind administration duties

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone looking to fully understand the role and practices of being a professional system administrator, as well as for system engineers, system administrators, and anyone in IT or management who wants to understand the administration career path. The book assumes a basic understanding of Linux, including the command line, and an understanding of how to research individual tasks. Basic working knowledge of Linux systems and servers is expected.

Table of Contents

1. What Is the Role of a System Administrator?
2. Choosing Your Distribution and Release Model
3. System Storage Best Practices
4. Designing System Deployment Architectures
5. Patch Management Strategies
6. Databases
7. Documentation, Monitoring, and Logging Techniques
8. Improving Administration Maturation with Automation through Scripting and DevOps
9. Backup and Disaster Recovery Approaches
10. User and Access Management Strategies
11. Troubleshooting

Scott Alan Miller has more than thirty years of experience in IT and software engineering having worked in companies of all sizes, from the smallest firms to the largest companies and governments, and in all types across nearly every type of industry with specialization in investment banking and small business. Scott has been an avid writer for IT magazines and books in both IT and software engineering, has led IT for companies, overseen outsourcing firms, spoken at conferences, worked in both K12 and university programs, contributed heavily to technology forums, and generally been involved in every aspect of the industry. Today Scott provides CIO and architecture services to companies of all sizes through an international consultancy. He also pursues his hobbies including being a hotelier, restaurateur, and photographer.