The NewsForge starts part one of a series of articles on how to prepare yourself as a Network Administrator.
As system and network administrators, we play many roles. We are the ones who provide stable and secure environments for electronic business in all of its forms, from email to accounting systems to mission-critical Web applications. However, despite our best efforts, disaster will occasionally strike. In this series, I'll present what I feel are the 10 most important steps a systems administrator can take to ensure that when that dreaded 3 a.m. page hits, you're prepared to react quickly, assess the situation, and make everything right again. I call these the Ten Commandments of system administration.
You know the situation. You might be in the middle of rebooting after something as benign as adding RAM to your server, when all of a sudden your root filesystem refuses to mount, and fsck isn't helping. Or perhaps a hard disk fails and six months of work on a project goes with it. The probability of these and other such occurrences taking place is often small, but when they actually occur, you'll be glad you've prepared ahead of time.
Many of these precautions may seem elementary or obvious to you, but too often our job as system administrators doesn't give us the time to properly plan or fully configure servers and network infrastructure for deployment, and as a result, things we meant to go back and take care of later slip through the cracks.
It is not my intention to provide you with step by step instructions on each of these topics, but merely to suggest what has worked for me, and point you in the right direction. As the administrator at your site, I invite you to evaluate your own situation and environment to determine the proper course of action for your organization, and share your tips with readers through your comments below.
