Articles from ADMIN Issue 01
The many approaches to managing remote computers include VNC, Nomachine, and SSH. Synergy is a clever tool that does a bit of lateral thinking and connects multiple PCs to create a virtual desktop.
Does your application data take ages to creep off your disk or your network card, even if no noticeable activity is taking place? Tools such as OProfile and SystemTap help you find out why.
Get standard scripts and custom applications into the cloud with the Debian packaging system.
The virtualization technology market is currently concentrating on hypervisor-based systems, but hosting providers often use an alternative technology. Container-based solutions such as OpenVZ/Virtuozzo are the most efficient way to go if the guest and host systems are both Linux.
In theory, virtualizing all your old servers is a good idea, but managing them won't necessarily become any easier. Virtual Machine Manager gives Windows administrators an easy option.
Teamviewer is an impressive demonstration of how easy remote control across routers and firewalls can be. The popular software is now available for Linux.
Ever dream of rolling out a complete computer farm with a single mouse click? If you stick to Linux computers and you speak a little Ruby, Chef can go a long way toward making that dream come true.
Administrators don't need a massive arsenal of tools just to monitor a couple of systems. With Microsoft's free Sysinternals suite, admins can handle all sorts of tasks.
PAM is a very powerful framework for handling software- and hardware-based user authentication, giving administrators a choice of implementation methods.
Even securely configured and patched web servers can be compromised because of vulnerabilities in a web application. ModSecurity is an Apache extension that acts as a web application firewall to protect the web server against attacks.