Linux Administration Best Practices Practical solutions to approaching the design and management of Linux systems

Description

Cover Title Page Copyright and Credits Contributors About the reviewer Table of Contents Preface Section 1: Understanding the Role of Linux System Administrator Chapter 1: What Is the Role of a System Administrator? Where are system administrators in the real world? Wearing the administrator and engineering hats The difference between the role of an administrator and the role of an engineer Hats The wonderous variety of the role Understanding systems in the business ecosystem Learning system administration Build a home lab Getting family and friends involved Start as a generalist and progress onto a specialist in the System Administrator field Volunteer for non-profits or non-business organizations Self-study Age does not matter Internships Introducing the IT Professional The fallacy of success at any cost Summary Chapter 2: Choosing Your Distribution and Release Model Understanding Linux in production Is Linux UNIX? Linux licensing Key vendors and products What about BSD? Debian Ubuntu IBM Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) RHEL alternatives Fedora OpenSUSE and SLES Digging into distribution history Other Linux distributions The myth of popularity Using multiple distributions Making the choice Releases and support: LTS, current, and rolling What does support mean? Release model: rapid release Release model: LTS Release and support schedule interplay: The overlap Release model: Rolling Why not just update the packages manually Choosing the release model for our workloads Choosing your distribution Do not fear risk Summary Section 2: Best Practices for Linux Technologies Chapter 3: System Storage Best Practices Exploring key factors in storage Cost Durability Availability Performance Scalability Capacity Understanding block storage: Local and SAN Locally attached block storage Storage Area Networks (SAN) The terrible terminology of SAN Surveying filesystems and network filesystems EXT4 XFS ZFS BtrFS Clustered file systems Network filesystems Getting to know logical volume management (LVM) Whatever happen to partitions Utilizing RAID and RAIN RAID RAIN Learning about replicated local storage DRBD Gluster and CEPH Proprietary and third-party open-source solutions Virtualization abstraction of storage Analyzing storage architectures and risk General storage architectures Simple local storage: The brick RLS: The ultra-high reliability solution The lab environment: Remote shared standard storage The giant scale: Remote replicated storage Storage best practices Storage example Summary Chapter 4: Designing System Deployment Architectures Virtualization Type 1 hypervisor Type 2 hypervisor Hypervisor types are confusing VMware ESXi Microsoft Hyper-V Xen KVM Is virtualization only for consolidation? Containerization Cloud and VPS Virtual Private Servers (VPS) On premises, hosted, and hybrid hosting Colocation System Design Architecture Standalone server, aka the snowflake Simple does not necessarily mean simple Many to many servers and storage Viewing the world as a workload Layered high availability Reliability is relative Hyperconvergence Best practices in System Design Architecture Risk assessment and availability needs Workload interplay Defining high availability Summary Chapter 5: Patch Management Strategies Binary, source, and script software deployments Compiled and interpreted software Misleading use of source installation Patching theory and strategies The risk of delayed patching Avoiding patches because of Windows Testing patches is rarely feasible Timeliness of patching Compilations for the administrator The compilation era Compilation by engineering department Linux deployment and redeployment Rebooting servers Finding your green zone Avoiding planned downtime is planning for unplanned downtime Summary Chapter 6: Databases Separating a Database from a DBMS The Database The Database engine The Database management system Comparing relational and NoSQL databases Discovering common databases on Linux Common relational databases on Linux Drop In replacements Common NoSQL Database Products on Linux Document databases Understanding database replication and data protection concepts Summary Section 3: Approaches to Effective System Administration Chapter 7: Documentation, Monitoring, and Logging Techniques Modern documentation: Wiki, live docs, repos Repos Ticketing systems Approaching documentation Tooling and impact Netdata Capacity planning It Is already designed when purchased Log management and security Why central logging? Alerts and troubleshooting On-device and centralized alerting systems Pushed and pulled alerts In house and hosted monitoring RMMs and monitoring Summary Chapter 8: Improving Administration Maturation with Automation through Scripting and DevOps The GUI and the CLI: Administration best practices Consolidation and the age of squeezing systems Automation maturity Local and remote automation Command line Scheduled tasks Scripting PowerShell on Linux Scripting combined with task scheduling State management Infrastructure as code Platforms and systems Modern tools of automation Configuration management systems Version control systems Summary Chapter 9: Backup and Disaster Recovery Approaches Agents and crash consistency Locking mechanisms in Linux MySQL example with mysqldump utility Backup strategies & mechanisms Types of backups Snapshots, archives, backups, and disaster recovery Snapshots Archives Backups Disaster recovery Backups in a DevOps world Version control systems IT provides solutions, vendors sell components Triage concepts Summary Chapter 10: User and Access Management Strategies Local and remote users User management mechanisms Using automation to turn local uses into remote users The famous RDP exposure risk Are operating system logins relevant in the modern world? Remote access approaches How do I approach remote access SSH, key management, and jump boxes Do you still need both a network edge firewall and an operating system firewall? Does changing the default port of SSH work? SSH key management Jump boxes Alternative remote access approaches Terminal servers and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) Understanding terminal services and VDI conceptually Summary Chapter 11: Troubleshooting The high cost of disaster avoidance Sources of solutions There is no magic support Visualizing what IT handles and what engineering handles IT vendor managements Triage skills and staff I can give status, or I can fix things Staffing for triage: The perceiver Logical approaches to troubleshooting Stories of troubleshooting Technical social media in problem solving Investigating versus fixing Summary The postmortem Index