The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition

Preface

Our goal for this book has been to write down everything we’ve learned from our mentors and to add our real-world experiences. These things are beyond what the manuals and the usual system administration books teach.

This book was born from our experiences as SAs in a variety of organizations. We have started new companies. We have helped sites to grow. We have worked at small start-ups and universities, where lack of funding was an issue. We have worked at midsize and large multinationals, where mergers and spin-offs gave rise to strange challenges. We have worked at fast-paced companies that do business on the Internet and where high-availability, high-performance, and scaling issues were the norm. We’ve worked at slow-paced companies ...