Apple iPad3

Details

Category: MAC

Published on Monday, 27 February 2012 12:43

Written by Super User

Hits: 216

The iPad2 has been a good device to remote manage my serves. I wonder what the iPad3 will bring. I can see how it can be much better but we all did not expect or see the iPad at all. The iPad3 may bring some nice tools for us, if the iPad3 does come out.

Fedora 16 Day 2

Details

Category: Linux

Published on Tuesday, 20 December 2011 12:52

Written by Server Administrator

Hits: 366

Fedora 16 Day 2

Fedora 16 is working out excellent for me so far. I have not had any crashes or lockups. With a cutting edge OS I would expect some issues but I have not had any.  I was looking for a GUI Linux system for my main system.  If this was my server systems, I would go with a command line Linux system only to save system resources and a GUI is really not needed on a server system.  It looks like Fedora will be my main system for a while. I hope all the tools hold up for all the administration task I like to do.

I do feel that there should have been more software on the system. I found myself installing thing I needed; such as,  flash, office, xchat,  skype, burn, nmap, vim and git. I can understand keeping the system light but how about the option during install. I also found myself falling back to yum to install tools. The GUI install tool just did not feel normal to me.

Read more: Fedora 16 Day 2

Linux Mint has Climbed To The Top

Details

Category: Linux

Published on Sunday, 18 December 2011 18:33

Written by Server Administrator

Hits: 293

Linux Mint has Climbed To The Top

Linux Mint has climbed to the top of the charts on distrowatch.com. Mint is now adding a Debian version to their wide spread of Distributions. This will make Mint a good option for server system. Mint has a really good looking GUI. I am not one to use the GUI but the Mint GUI looks really nice. The thing I don’t like about Debian Mint is no 64x version at this point. It is still early so we will let Mint work out the bugs before we give Mint a good look.

If there are any questions, stop by and see our forum at http://forum.the-server-admin.com

NMAP and ZENMAP

Details

Category: Security

Published on Tuesday, 13 December 2011 12:55

Written by Server Administrator

Hits: 812

NMAP and ZENMAP
NMAP is a security tool I use to see network traffic on remote servers. NMAP can do many type of scans and this post is only touching the beginning of the command. When I am looking for a port on a remote server I use the command nmap 192.168.1.100. This will show me all open ports.  If I want to scan an entire subnet I run the command NMAP 192.168.1.0/24. ZENMAP is the GUI frontend to NAMP and I have never used the GUI. I am not one to use GUIs. They just sound messy. :)

Here is a good book on nmap at http://nmap.org/book/

Simple command
nmap 192.168.1.100
nmap 192.168.1.0/24

If there are any questions, see our forum at http://forum.the-server-admin.com

Network Time Protocol (NTP)

Details

Category: Server Room

Published on Monday, 12 December 2011 12:47

Written by Server Administrator

Hits: 871

Network Time Protocol (NTP)

Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a protocol that system administrators use to update time on network devices or host on a packed switched network. Clients and servers on the the same network should have the same time because of security and troubleshooting. Time is important in the server world with out it  administration would be difficult at best.

How is Network Time Protocol (NTP) Implemented

Normally Network Time Protocol (NTP) is implemented in the operating system (OS) of the network host. Linux and Unix systems use a daemon that runs around the clock and this daemon process is called NTPD. Windows systems 2000 and above have the Windows Time Server. Windows and Linux NTP clients synchronizes with a server regardless of the OS.

How dose Network Time Protocol (NTP) help Troubleshooting

The time on a system helps troubleshooting by setting the time for all the system task and files. For example,  log files with an accurate time will give the system administrator a better feeling for what the server is doing. Also, system files being created with the right times can help tremendously. Being able to modify files and system tasks by timestamps can speed up task.

Read more: Network Time Protocol (NTP)

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Details

Category: Server Room

Published on Friday, 09 December 2011 03:40

Written by Server Administrator

Hits: 338

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)

Should you host your server on the Amazon EC2? First you need to know what is Amazon EC2. The Amazon EC2 is a cloud base scalable server solution. Acording to http://aws.amazon.com, “Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. So the questions becomes do I need a scalable solution? Hmm...Power just for the sake of power the Jedi way is not (I know I am bad Yoda).

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a good solution if the company is planning to grow. If you are building a large site and don't have the funds up font to start with, using Ubuntu and scaling out to EC2 is a good plan.

If there are any questions, comment on our new comment system or see our forum at http://forum.the-server-admin.com

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2

Details

Category: Linux

Published on Thursday, 08 December 2011 12:34

Written by Server Administrator

Hits: 359

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2

Looks like Red Hat has announced the release of Enterprise Linux 6.2. today.

"Red Hat announces the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2, which delivers to customers a second wave of feature enhancements and demonstrates the continued value that Red Hat delivers as part of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 life cycle. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 delivers significant improvements in virtualization, resource management and high availability, and offers new features in storage and file system performance and identity management. The key benefits for organizations employing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 are higher levels of efficiency realized through resource management and performance optimization."

The Red Hat Enterprise is a good distribution for the server world. Red Hat is sound and secure, thus making a good OS for the business.

If there are any questions, ask them in our forum at http://forum.the-server-admin.com.

Why is RAID 5 Dead?

Details

Category: Server Room

Published on Wednesday, 07 December 2011 12:53

Written by Server Administrator

Hits: 324

Why is RAID 5 Dead?

A buddy of mine told me how bad RAID 5 was so here it is. Like every technology RAID 5 has been over taken by better technologies. Here are the reasons why:

Disks fail

Disk to fail and when more than two disk fail the array is done for causing hours of wrk getting the system back online and you better have a backup ready.

Disk capacities double

With RAID 5 you lose a lot of disk space. I do not like to give up disk space

Now What?

There are many technologies out today that are better than RAID 5.RAID6 is a bit better but the most common file system people are moving to is ZFS. ZFS gives you many option and right speeds out of this world.

If there are any questions, see out forum at http://forum.the-server-admin.com

Linux Cron

Details

Category: Commands

Published on Wednesday, 07 December 2011 03:37

Written by Server Administrator

Hits: 294

Linux Cron

Cron jobs are task setup on a Linux or UNIX system to run at a set time. I seen a few questions around about cronjobs. Here is a reference on cron.

How do I visit a site every day at 5 AM?Run the command “crontab -e” to edit the cron file. Then type:

0 5 * * * curl http://www.the-server-admin.com

Curl is a basic Linux command. Cron will run any command in this order.

How do I get cron Emails? Edit he crontab file: crontab -e Then make cron look like:

MAILTO: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

0 5 * * * curl http://www.the-server-admin.com

You can also get disk space output via cron. Edit the crontab... you should know who to do this by now. :) Make cron look like this:

MAILTO: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

0 5 * * * curl http://www.the-server-admin.com

0 12 * * * df -h

So any command you want to run everyday add the command to crontab.

If there are any questions, see our forum at http://forum.the-server-admin.com