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Ebook: Solaris™ Solutions for System Administrators

Time-Saving Tips, Techniques, and Workarounds, Second Edition

“The network is the computer.” More than a catchy phrase, this slogan (which Sun coined more than a dozen years ago) describes a fundamental reality of computing today: The location of data, processing, and services are not as important as how and when these resources are used. With advances in the Web, we might even say, “The Internet is the computer.” The systems we manage have evolved into portals to a universe of information and tools. Basic software applications are increasingly Internet-, intranet-, and Web-centric. This was true when this book was first published in the year 2000. It is even more true today with the proliferation of network storage and service-centric computing.

But how do we manage our systems and networks to best effect this reality? How do we keep our systems and networks manageable? What kind of foundation do we need to build locally so that the layers of complication wrought by services provided internally and externally go down smoothly and reliably? What kind of skills do we need to manage an increasingly virtual network? Our users are sending e-mail around the globe. Our networks comprise ever-changing configurations of new and aging systems. We are seeing both data and system services becoming disassociated from the server hardware. Our responsibilities as systems administrators now often incorporate managing clusters, configuring networks, monitoring security, Webmastering, performance analysis, and debugging, in addition to the standard fare of software installation, account and printer management, and backups.

Everything in this book is intended to move you in the direction of the manageable network—to introduce you to tools and provide you with strategies that will help you manage your systems.

No one can manage infinite complexity. And, if anyone could, that person would likely be smart enough or “interesting” enough that he or she wouldn’t want to. Those of us who have been in the business of managing large networks for a long time understand that it is far easier to manage several hundred systems that are all the same than half a dozen that are all different. These two scenarios represent opposite ends of the spectrum with respect to homogeneity and heterogeneity. However, most of us are managing networks of systems that are somewhere in between these all-the-same and all-different models. Regardless of where you sit on the spectrum, you will find that your job will be easier and your life more pleasant in direct proportion to the degree of uniformity you can introduce into the environment that you manage. The more you can configure systems and services more or less identically, the easier a time you will have in every phase of managing them—from installation to backups.

At the same time, the move toward highly available services and virtual computing mandates a dramatic change in the way that we will do our jobs. Solaris 9 is more than just another release of Sun’s operating environment. Solaris 9 represents a major shift of focus. Incorporating directory services and serious security tools (e.g., SSH, RBAC and the Sun Screen firewall) along with major new management tools, Solaris 9 will make your job much better or much worse, but clearly different. With enough insight and preparation, you will probably love this new release of Solaris.

Of all the strategies that we suggest to you within the pages of this book, the best is one that we’ve borrowed from the Boy Scouts: Be prepared. Regardless of how carefully and wisely you lay out your network and configure your systems and services, something will break. Adopting a policy of planning for disaster and of thinking through all the what-if scenarios that you can imagine will help reduce your stress as well as your downtime when one of these disasters actually happens. With respect to highly available services, preparing for disaster boils down to knowing how to manage and monitor HA services. Though we anticipate a steeply sloped learning curve for systems administrators coming up to speed on Solaris 9, we also have confidence that the plateau will be long and flat. Our networks will be easier to manage and our tasks less tedious.

By Sandra Henry-Stocker and Evan R. Marks
Copyright © 2003 by Sandra Henry-Stocker, Evan R. Marks. All rights reserved.
Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 0-471-43115-X

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