Any UNIX SA's?

You can use webmin, i generally don't these days. Not all systems you use will have it so it's best to learn it the hard way too.

It's also useful to know the old vi shortcuts rather than the new ones, just in case.
 
quackers said:
Thanks for the advices guys, I'll have a go of Centos on my poweredge 1750. Can you use webmin to access it or should I be using something else?
Click to expand...

Please do NOT use Centos, it's horrid. Use Debian. I don't know anyone or any company that would look badly on having experience with Debian.
 
dangerstat said:
Please do NOT use Centos, it's horrid. Use Debian. I don't know anyone or any company that would look badly on having experience with Debian.
Click to expand...

There's nothing wrong with CentOS. It is essentially RHEL, but without the support contract (the bit that costs lots of money) and RHEL is not a bad distro. It's far from what I would use at home, but for a server, it's rock solid and almost universally used.

Don't get me wrong, Debian is also a great distro (and incidentally has a much better package manager IMHO) and having experience of it certainly won't hurt; but in the enterprise, it's pretty much hands down to the Rouge Bonnet.

At enterprise level when GNU/Linux is deployed - apart from appliances which I have almost always built from Arch, although a couple of times have been Deb netinst - I have not once seen anything other that RHEL/CentOS. This obviously doesn't mean that it doesn't happen - it just means that in my particular experience this is the case.


But... back to the main discussion! What's wrong with SSH for access to the box?
 
dangerstat said:
Please do NOT use Centos, it's horrid. Use Debian. I don't know anyone or any company that would look badly on having experience with Debian.
Click to expand...

Do not follow this advice if you want to move into enterprise Unix SA'ing ... in larger companies having enterprise grade support is what is looked for and that means in most cases RHEL or SLES. CentOS allows you to look at a system which is essentially the same as RHEL without having to pay for it.

Debian is not used by Enterprise customers I've dealt with (which is a lot) as getting support of the required grade and having Enterprise grade tools (e.g. Satellite) are often the most important issues.

Also Enterprise environments often insist that the platform is certified for the application (e.g. Oracle) in order to get proper levles of support.
 
memyselfandi said:
Do not follow this advice if you want to move into enterprise Unix SA'ing ... in larger companies having enterprise grade support is what is looked for and that means in most cases RHEL or SLES. CentOS allows you to look at a system which is essentially the same as RHEL without having to pay for it.

Debian is not used by Enterprise customers I've dealt with (which is a lot) as getting support of the required grade and having Enterprise grade tools (e.g. Satellite) are often the most important issues.

Also Enterprise environments often insist that the platform is certified for the application (e.g. Oracle) in order to get proper levles of support.
Click to expand...

Well that's a surprise as Debian is used by the majority (which is a lot) of "large" companies I have worked with.
 
dave-lew99 said:
It's also useful to know the old vi shortcuts rather than the new ones, just in case.
Click to expand...
It's essential, otherwise a machine with vi rather than vim will drive you insane.

dangerstat said:
Well that's a surprise as Debian is used by the majority (which is a lot) of "large" companies I have worked with.
Click to expand...
Really? The enterprise storage product I tested added OS support when customers requested it, Debian has only just been requested. RHEL and SLES are what Enterprise are using.
 
I've never seen Debian in the banking world, only RHEL and SLES so yes, go with CentOS.

...and yes, learn vi, some simple shell scripting (for loops, if statements etc.) and how to manage the network. None of this should be done via any sort of GUI...
 
BigglesPiP said:
Really? The enterprise storage product I tested added OS support when customers requested it, Debian has only just been requested. RHEL and SLES are what Enterprise are using.
Click to expand...

Really. It depends on the team and the nature of the work they're doing. The teams I tend to have exposure to are quite agile and keen to utilize a stable open source operating systems. In addition lots of staff who have "messed" with Linux have typically used Ubuntu meaning that Debian is much easier for them too naturally pickup· In terms of "enterprise computing" we have no issues with Debian, and in there's probably a stronger movement towards Debian and away from RHEL if anything in recent months / years.

As such we tend to have a very negative opinion of those advocating CentOS above stable / cutting edge alternatives like Debian
 
Last edited:
There's quite a few Enterprise Linux Admins / Consultants / Architects on this board.

As mentioned, often the Enterprise use of Linux is not cutting edge (although I'm sure they do exist).

Grab yourself the Red Hat technician book by Tammy Fox and get reading / dabbling :)
 
Never saw anything but RHEL when I was working as an IT consultant. This was a few years ago though, so may have changed. Never worked anywhere that considered anything "cutting edge" stable enough for enterprise use either.
 
dangerstat said:
Really. It depends on the team and the nature of the work they're doing. The teams I tend to have exposure to are quite agile and keen to utilize a stable open source operating systems. In addition lots of staff who have "messed" with Linux have typically used Ubuntu meaning that Debian is much easier for them too naturally pickup· In terms of "enterprise computing" we have no issues with Debian, and in there's probably a stronger movement towards Debian and away from RHEL if anything in recent months / years.

As such we tend to have a very negative opinion of those advocating CentOS above stable / cutting edge alternatives like Debian
Click to expand...

I actually find that Debian's "free or we don't use it" attitude gets in the way of business, and there have been some iffy bugs in recent years (SSL/SSH fiasco). They handle their release schedule quite badly, releasing slowly in the past, then stepping up to regular releases and just missing what would have been a few useful versions of stuff (including a kernel) in one smooth move. But that's just my opinion.

I like to use Debian on non production machines (small internal tools etc.) as it's easy to set up and install stuff, the repos being open to the world and all.


For my own machine I use Ubuntu at the moment, because it just works and the repos are big. I've not needed to install a module or compile a program in a long time. But I'm finding each new version leaves me with more stuff to change once installed. I don't like Evolution or Empathy, and this Yahoo! thing will probably push me out. Looking at Crunchbang and Mint to keep a Debian based system.
 
Last edited:
dangerstat said:
Really. It depends on the team and the nature of the work they're doing. The teams I tend to have exposure to are quite agile and keen to utilize a stable open source operating systems. In addition lots of staff who have "messed" with Linux have typically used Ubuntu meaning that Debian is much easier for them too naturally pickup· In terms of "enterprise computing" we have no issues with Debian, and in there's probably a stronger movement towards Debian and away from RHEL if anything in recent months / years.

As such we tend to have a very negative opinion of those advocating CentOS above stable / cutting edge alternatives like Debian
Click to expand...

Frankly we don't want people who have "messed" with Linux. The vast majority of our staff come from a Unix background and we then get them training in Linux. We've had enough problems with people who know a little and think they know more breaking things and making issues worse.

No systems running a Debian, or Debian based OS, (or for that matter CentOS), have been or are likely to be signed off into support due to the lack of enterprise support providers etc CentOS is ok for learning how RHEL works at home but has the same support issues in a commercial environment.

I have nothing against Debian, Ubuntu, etc in a non-Enterprise environment but if we are having to work to SLAs then we want a vendor the buck can stop with and certified platforms which won't put our application vendor support at risk.
 
dangerstat said:
Please do NOT use Centos, it's horrid. Use Debian. I don't know anyone or any company that would look badly on having experience with Debian.
Click to expand...

Dangerstat in bad advice non-shocker.

Whilst Debian et al are fine in SME's that have leeway were SLAs are concerned, no enterprise is going to be using a non-commercial product for mission critical systems without having a vendor to rely on.

As everyone else has said, CentOS is a great place to start to learning. I'm currently relearning the cluster suite :)
 
thanks for all the advice chaps, I'm going to have a play with Ubuntu Server 9.10 for a bit then move onto Centos 5.4. :) If redhat is the enterprise server of choice, then it's definitely worth me getting some experience with Centos.
 
memyselfandi said:
Frankly we don't want people who have "messed" with Linux. The vast majority of our staff come from a Unix background and we then get them training in Linux. We've had enough problems with people who know a little and think they know more breaking things and making issues worse.

No systems running a Debian, or Debian based OS, (or for that matter CentOS), have been or are likely to be signed off into support due to the lack of enterprise support providers etc CentOS is ok for learning how RHEL works at home but has the same support issues in a commercial environment.

I have nothing against Debian, Ubuntu, etc in a non-Enterprise environment but if we are having to work to SLAs then we want a vendor the buck can stop with and certified platforms which won't put our application vendor support at risk.
Click to expand...

I see your point, and in many respects I agree. I think unfortunately in our environment many come to Linux from backgrounds of total Windows use, many of them are talented developers and / or admins in that environment, and we don't want to ignore / lose the skills they have.

We understand that Ubuntu tends to be their first experience with Linux in these times and try to encourage them to develop what they have learned whilst using Ubuntu by making a slight evolution to using a more secure OS like Debian.

CentOS and RHEL in our experience tend to be a bridge too far.

On RHEL and CentOS more generally, we place with Fedora on being in their own right excellent platforms but we often experience far greater difficulties implementing projects / solutions on these than with a standard Debian based platform. Obviously this may differ in banking or whatever sector you may be in.
 
Actually we've just about finished ripping out all traces of debian from our environment now. All gone in favour of RHEL (and some specialized Solaris machines, though they're becoming rarer now).

Debian is usually the choice of stereotyped sysadmins (the number of boxes with bizarre custom kernels and the like we found was staggering) but in terms of business case it hasn't got a lot going for it.

RHEL also has the advantage I can send people on an official course and get official certs, which clients like as always.
 
I've just moved from being a UNIX SA/SE into running a UNIX engineering team for our company. Lots of new hw, and sw wise a mixture of Sol 8/9/10, RHEL, and CentOS.

As for your question of "how you got into it" - I started as a PC/Laser printer engineer, and progressed through different roles - any kind of sw programming and admin was in my own time. I wen to work for Sun as a field engineer in London (hardware), then progressed to be a storage SSE. Moved on to work for various Sun partners doing consultation and installations, then got into a basic sys admin role. Moved to my current employer 2yrs ago as a senior engineer (doing hw and sw, not just sysadmin but applications), then promoted to run the UNIX engineering team 3mnths ago.

Have some interest in hardware as well as software, especially if you want to get into UNIX rather the just Linux, as Solaris/AIX/HP-UX all have tie-ins to hardware. For Linux just learn yourself - spend some time understanding how the os works underneath, and also pickup knowledge on apps (basic stuff like Apache, DNS, networking, LDAP). Being able to demonstrate this kind of stuff will make you attractive to employers. One last thing - learn a couple of decent scripting languages - BASH/KSH shell scripting, and things like Perl, even at a basic level, are really useful.

Good luck
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom