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The Practice of System and Network Administration
The first edition of The Practice of System and Network Administration introduced a generation of system and network administrators to a modern IT methodology. Whether you use Linux, Unix, or Windows, this newly revised edition describes the essential practices previously handed down only from mentor to protégé. This wonderfully lucid, often funny cornucopia of information introduces beginners to advanced frameworks valuable for their entire career, yet is structured to help even the most advanced experts through difficult projects. The book's four major sections build your knowledge with the foundational elements of system administration. These sections guide you through better techniques for upgrades and change management, catalog best practices for IT services, and explore various management topics. Chapters are divided into The Basics and The Icing. When you get the Basics right it makes every other aspect of the job easier--such as automating the right things first. The Icing sections contain all the powerful things that can be done on top of the basics to wow customers and managers. Inside, you'll find advice on topics such as It's no wonder the first edition received Usenix SAGE's 2005 Outstanding Achievement Award! This eagerly anticipated second edition updates this time-proven
1011 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
October 30, 2010
This book is about System Administration. *HIGHLY* Recommended for
System Administrations from *any* level.
What can you expect from this book? In a nutshell: a Big Picture
Analysis from System Administration.
Example. You will *not* learn how to setup Windows 2008 R2 Server for
Best Security Practices.
But, for example, *You Will Learn* How To Organize Groups of Admins
People sou you can work on a High Priority Project. As you may guess,
SysAdmins are interrupted ALL the time... SO How Can you manage this
Issue? You will learn in this book...
This is only a example... The book is a PLEASURE reading at all... There
is a LOT of case Studies... telling the history on a project/problem
from the beginning.. Fantastic!
### CASE STUDY COPIED DIRECT FROM THE BOOK ###
Chapter 15 (Debugging) - Case Study, Find the Latency Problem Once
Tom was tracking reports of high latency on a network link. The problem
hap- pened only occasionally.He set up a continuous (once per second)
ping between twoma- chines that should demonstrate the problem and
recorded this output for several hours. He observed consistently
good (low) latency, except that occasionally, there seemed to be
trouble. A small perl program was written to analyze the logs and
extract pings with high latency—latency more than three times the
average of the first 20 pings—and highlight missed pings. He noticed
that no pings were being missed but that every so often, a series
of pings took much longer to arrive. He used a spreadsheet to graph
the latency over time. Visualizing the results helped him notice that
the problem occurred every 5 minutes, within a second or two. It also
happened at other times, but every 5 minutes, he was assured of
seeing the problem. He realized that some protocols do certain
operations every 5 minutes. Could a route table refresh be overloading
the CPU of a router? Was a protocol overloading a link? By process of
elimination, he isolated the problem to a particular router. Its CPU was
being overloaded by routing table calculations, which happened every
time there was a real change to the network plus every 5 minutes during
the usual route table refresh. This agreed with the previously collected
data. The fact that it was an overloaded CPU and not an overloaded
network link explained why latency increased but no packets were lost.
The router had enough buffering to ensure that no packets were dropped.
Once he fixed the problem with the router, the ping test and log
analysis were used again to demonstrate that the problem had been fixed.
The customer who had reported the problem was a scientist with a
particularly con- descending attitude toward SAs. After confirming with
him that the problem had been resolved, the scientist was shown the
methodology, including the graphs of timing data. His attitude improved
significantly once he found respect for their methods.
System Administrations from *any* level.
What can you expect from this book? In a nutshell: a Big Picture
Analysis from System Administration.
Example. You will *not* learn how to setup Windows 2008 R2 Server for
Best Security Practices.
But, for example, *You Will Learn* How To Organize Groups of Admins
People sou you can work on a High Priority Project. As you may guess,
SysAdmins are interrupted ALL the time... SO How Can you manage this
Issue? You will learn in this book...
This is only a example... The book is a PLEASURE reading at all... There
is a LOT of case Studies... telling the history on a project/problem
from the beginning.. Fantastic!
### CASE STUDY COPIED DIRECT FROM THE BOOK ###
Chapter 15 (Debugging) - Case Study, Find the Latency Problem Once
Tom was tracking reports of high latency on a network link. The problem
hap- pened only occasionally.He set up a continuous (once per second)
ping between twoma- chines that should demonstrate the problem and
recorded this output for several hours. He observed consistently
good (low) latency, except that occasionally, there seemed to be
trouble. A small perl program was written to analyze the logs and
extract pings with high latency—latency more than three times the
average of the first 20 pings—and highlight missed pings. He noticed
that no pings were being missed but that every so often, a series
of pings took much longer to arrive. He used a spreadsheet to graph
the latency over time. Visualizing the results helped him notice that
the problem occurred every 5 minutes, within a second or two. It also
happened at other times, but every 5 minutes, he was assured of
seeing the problem. He realized that some protocols do certain
operations every 5 minutes. Could a route table refresh be overloading
the CPU of a router? Was a protocol overloading a link? By process of
elimination, he isolated the problem to a particular router. Its CPU was
being overloaded by routing table calculations, which happened every
time there was a real change to the network plus every 5 minutes during
the usual route table refresh. This agreed with the previously collected
data. The fact that it was an overloaded CPU and not an overloaded
network link explained why latency increased but no packets were lost.
The router had enough buffering to ensure that no packets were dropped.
Once he fixed the problem with the router, the ping test and log
analysis were used again to demonstrate that the problem had been fixed.
The customer who had reported the problem was a scientist with a
particularly con- descending attitude toward SAs. After confirming with
him that the problem had been resolved, the scientist was shown the
methodology, including the graphs of timing data. His attitude improved
significantly once he found respect for their methods.
July 6, 2012
It’s hard for me to say enough good things about this book. Limoncelli and Hogan’s comprehensive coverage of computer system and network administration is nearly breathtaking. Their viewpoint is high enough that they don’t get embroiled in the nitty gritty of shell scripts or configuration files, but not so high that it devolves into pure abstractions. You’re out of luck if you want cool sendmail tweaks or you’re looking for a comprehensive philosophy of computers or management—but if you’re a working sysadmin or IT manager, this book is worth some serious study.
The book is broken out into three major sections: Principles, Processes, and Practice. The book’s companion web site lists the table of contents, so there’s no sense repeating it here. Some of the chapters were expected, like “Disaster Recovery and Data Integrity.” Others, like the one on managing “Namespaces” were pleasant surprises.
The focus of each chapter is what needs to be accomplished, the processes helpful to achieving the goal, and the dangers that might be encountered. The discussions contain a mixture of exposition, lists, and case studies. The expositions can be long, but I’ve found them engaging, with very few wasted words. Chapters conclude with a section called “The Icing” that gives some direction for growth after the basics are covered. There’s little evidence that this book was rushed to press; the writing, editing, and layout are top-notch.
These days, I tend to reach for this book whenever it’s time to launch or re-examine an IT service. When all is said and done, my only real fear is that my supervisor might find my copy and read it. Then he’d have a really good grasp of all the things I haven’t done so well…
The book is broken out into three major sections: Principles, Processes, and Practice. The book’s companion web site lists the table of contents, so there’s no sense repeating it here. Some of the chapters were expected, like “Disaster Recovery and Data Integrity.” Others, like the one on managing “Namespaces” were pleasant surprises.
The focus of each chapter is what needs to be accomplished, the processes helpful to achieving the goal, and the dangers that might be encountered. The discussions contain a mixture of exposition, lists, and case studies. The expositions can be long, but I’ve found them engaging, with very few wasted words. Chapters conclude with a section called “The Icing” that gives some direction for growth after the basics are covered. There’s little evidence that this book was rushed to press; the writing, editing, and layout are top-notch.
These days, I tend to reach for this book whenever it’s time to launch or re-examine an IT service. When all is said and done, my only real fear is that my supervisor might find my copy and read it. Then he’d have a really good grasp of all the things I haven’t done so well…
January 16, 2022
It's obviously completely out of date in 2022 from a technical point of view. However, many of the principles in this book very much still apply to any IT service as these things did not change in the last decade.
The book covers everything from project management to maintaining good service health and even includes specific advice on how to hire (and fire) IT staffers. Comprehensive read!
This should be read by anyone working or aspiring to work in IT.
The book covers everything from project management to maintaining good service health and even includes specific advice on how to hire (and fire) IT staffers. Comprehensive read!
This should be read by anyone working or aspiring to work in IT.
Read
January 2, 2020This is one the best books for programmers and I think every PROGRAMMER should read it. The only problem this book has is some PARTS of it is written specifically for senior developers and architects; so, you may want to skip them, if you're not a senior developer yet, like myself.
September 25, 2021
This was an excellent book and guide for Network Administrators... the only more important book to anyone in IT is Time Management for System Administrators by the same author. This many knows IT and geeks better than anyone I have ever heard speak.
June 20, 2017
Mostly is useful for helpdesk people.
April 2, 2019
if you work in ICT, you need to read this book. I bought it in 2007 and it's been one of the best education investments I've ever made.
June 25, 2018
Meh. Read it for a college class. An OK introduction to systems administration.
October 4, 2018
Excellent book, really worth reading.
One star less for the repetitions.
One star less for the repetitions.
February 16, 2019
Great step be step to avoiding the common mistakes in systems administration.
December 21, 2015
Want to learn how to sysadmin the right way? This is THE "de-facto" BEST PRACTICES book for sysadmins and literally made me from scrub mid-level sysadmin to senior and technical task manager. It enables one to effectively communicate what operations environments are struggling to management successfully and get your team to work the right way and not just churn out highly technical skills and tasks without purpose.
If someone asked me to learn how to be a system administrator, I give them a book on a particular OS or skill and then hand them this book second.
While Tom has another newer book out that focuses on cloud enterprises and environments and is an important read, this book after 8-9 years still holds strong and if you go to any forum including the /r/sysadmin reddit, you will see it listed as their recommended titles you must have!
If someone asked me to learn how to be a system administrator, I give them a book on a particular OS or skill and then hand them this book second.
While Tom has another newer book out that focuses on cloud enterprises and environments and is an important read, this book after 8-9 years still holds strong and if you go to any forum including the /r/sysadmin reddit, you will see it listed as their recommended titles you must have!
January 2, 2020
Lots of good. A wide range of topics, concepts over details, and it clearly has been extensively updated to stay relevant (I read the 2017 update). I plan to read Volume 2.
The meh:
- For having "DevOps" in the current sub-title and referencing it frequently, they barely define what they mean by the term
- For all that it has been updated, it seems woefully unaware of (or silent on) how Xaas pieces might fit into the ecosystems of companies large or small- and I don't have the impression that Vol 2 is likely to address a lot of the cases for this
- While focusing on "System Administrators" and occasionally mentioning "developers", the book seems unaware that there could even exist the many in-betweens that make up the majority of the organization that I work for (or maybe we're all SAs to these authors) and the world of customization of packaged software.
The meh:
- For having "DevOps" in the current sub-title and referencing it frequently, they barely define what they mean by the term
- For all that it has been updated, it seems woefully unaware of (or silent on) how Xaas pieces might fit into the ecosystems of companies large or small- and I don't have the impression that Vol 2 is likely to address a lot of the cases for this
- While focusing on "System Administrators" and occasionally mentioning "developers", the book seems unaware that there could even exist the many in-betweens that make up the majority of the organization that I work for (or maybe we're all SAs to these authors) and the world of customization of packaged software.
Read
June 16, 2008This book is basically a best-practice manual for systems administration. It's extremely well written, covering both technical and policy issues with examples and short case studies throughout. One really nice feature is that each chapter is broken down into "The Basics" (what you need to do to get something working), and "The Icing" (additional things you can do to be a cut above the rest).[return][return]One day I will make time to read this book cover to cover, but in the meantime it's an excellent reference - especially when attempting to communicate with management on sysadmin issues .
August 16, 2013
Required reading for anyone looking to move beyond level 1 help desk. Do not pass this book up. One of the key elements to a good tech book is that it does not talk about specific technology, even though specific technology may be referenced. It talks about process. And process has a LOT longer life span than any piece of software or hardware.
June 8, 2021
Do not be scared by the year of publication. It may seem outdated by for a lot of activities in the realm of it infrastructure it is pretty valid, because mostly it points out mistakes of people, not technical skills.
I would suggest it to any person in the realm of IT, the concepts contained in the book are useful, even just as input to know more.
I would suggest it to any person in the realm of IT, the concepts contained in the book are useful, even just as input to know more.
February 3, 2008
This is the *other* sysadmin bible. While the other books tell you how to build and manage your systems, this is the one that talks about everything else. I suggest reading it with stick-on tabs by your side, you'll want to mark places to come back to later on.
March 17, 2013
I recommended this book to all the systems admin and CM people that have worked for me. The topics will help anyone in those fields understand how make their role in any company more professional and valuable.
January 23, 2015
This is focused on system administrators, but I think it's invaluable for those from a development background trying to understand more about the ops mindset, especially those struggling to move their organizations towards something like DevOps.
March 21, 2017
Pretty solid book. Some sections are a bit outdated, but worthwhile advice.
September 27, 2012
This is a must read for sysadmins.
January 4, 2013
This is a really great book. Give really good advise. The insight and some of the stories actually help me in my work.
June 30, 2013
A must have for all Sys admins.
July 5, 2013
really nice book, explain those topics in the system administration job that you just don't pay attention and can be a problem. The only bad thing... is repetitive.
May 5, 2014
This is a great introduction to systems administration at a high level.
December 27, 2014
Took me about a year to get trough. Worth every second spent on it.
December 30, 2016
Большой сборник полезных рецептов для админов. Жалко, что технических деталей маловато, но это копнесируется большим количеством житейской мудрости.
August 5, 2022
Comprehensive book that covers all the facets of SA. A good start if you are coming out of another IT domain.
June 20, 2014
A comprehensive guide on how to organize your IT to cover most relevant business processes.
October 11, 2015
Another excellent book for the practicing system and network administrators
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews