Re: server administration

[Mohit Muthanna <mohit.muthanna () gmail com>]

Harry,

What you're talking about falls under the realm of Systems / Network
Management. Generally when you have large numbers of servers / devices
to manage you need an effective tool. You can write your own scripts,
but you'd just be duplicating the efforts of a number of available
tools out there.

I'd suggest you read up on SNMP. And check out the following tools
(google them):

- net-snmp ( an SNMP agent )
- nagios ( very sophisticated network management tool )
- nmap ( good discovery tool )
- ntop ( traffic analysis, RMON agent, performance monitoring )
- sar ( system performance monitoring )
- argus (network performance monitornig)
- rsync (distributed configurations, files etc.)
- openssh (if you don't know what this is, you're in trouble) 
- rcs, cvs or subversion (change control)

There are also a number of commercial tools availabe, but the above
list encompasses most of what you will need.

Hope this helps,
Mohit.

-- 
Mohit Muthanna, CISSP 
mohit (at) muthanna (uhuh) com
"There are 10 types of people. Those who understand binary, and those
who don't."

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