Some Collected Advice for Network Admins
So, I promised you more technical stuff here, right?
Well, stop yer grinin’ and grab yer linen, ’cause here come a fist full of links with some great advice for network administrators, all from TechRepublic:
First, if you’re a real network admin, you’ve dealt with traffic issues on file servers. Issues that have hidden sources. Unknown processes that jam up your network connections until your users scream for your head. So, how do you deal with that when you’re on a budget and don’t have a lot of tools? Well, one way is to use “netstat” to look at what process is running on what port and sending what volume of data. If you’re on Unix, you probably already know about this tool, but if you’re on Windows, check out “Netstat tips and tricks for Windows admins“. It may save your bacon one day.
Second, you probably have wireless in your network now, too, right? But, it may not always work quite the way you want. Once again, users will scream bloody murder if they can’t read their blogs on their iPhone, so, how do you find out what’s jamming up your WIFI network so that no one can connect? Read through “Troubleshooting for wireless connectivity issues” to get you started on running down the problem.
Thirdly, if you’re a REAL network administrator, you probably have at least one Linux box in your network. Something that runs an open source network inventory or monitoring tool or, maybe even, an actual Linux file server. In any case, sooner or later, even that sad, little, neglected Linux box will have disk space issues, so here are “10 things you can do when the drive on your Linux box is full“.
And, finally, my personal favorite. You hear a lot of buzzwords floating around these days in IT shops, but “the cloud” is the most common magic cure for all ills. Personally, I’m not so sure. I worry about things like, oh, you know, security and auditing and connectivity issues and little details like that which seem like they might be an issue for the magic cloud computing panacea. Turns out, I’m not the only one. So, go see why Patrick Gray says “The cloud doesn’t matter“.
Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned."
--Peter Marshall
