As your network grows, managing Linux systems manually becomes time consuming and impractical. Enter Spacewalk: an open source tool that takes the footwork out of network management.
MySQL is the standard solution for free relational database systems in web applications, but new forks, more storage engines, and patched versions muddy the water. Now's the time to take stock of the most important offerings.
For years, Exchange has been the standard in-house server solution for all messaging tasks on Windows. This article introduces the highlights of the new Exchange version 2010.
One small oversight can cost you hours of extra work and your company thousands of dollars. Here are a few backup tools to help you recover gracefully.
The vanilla kernel includes two cluster filesystems: OCFS2 has been around since 2.6.16 and is thus senior to GFS2. Although OCFS2 is non-trivial under the hood, it is fairly simple to deploy.
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.
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.
Administrators often write custom monitoring programs to make sure their daemons are providing the intended functionality. But simple shell tools are just as well suited to this task, and not just for systems that are low on resources.
Because Microsoft's legacy VPN protocol, PPTP, has a couple of vulnerabilities, SSTP, which routes data via an SSL connection, was introduced as the new VPN protocol with Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7.
