This book is intended for the UNIX Administrators’ clients: those who support the applications and respond to the business units.
Most UNIX books are written for SAs (systems administrators). These books are valuable, but also cover tasks unnecessary for application support, such as server setup and adding users. But critical topics like capacity monitoring are left to the most challenging UNIX books.
The first chapter will step through how to familiarize yourself with a server that is new to you.
Subsequent chapters will cover other topics of interest to applications support staff:
Logging in, including information on user IDs
Processes and Applications, including information on logging
Networking
Files and Directories
Storage including disks and SAN
Measuring performance/capacity issues: disks
Measuring performance/capacity issues: CPU
Measuring performance/capacity issues: Memory and swap
High availability and clustering
Appendices:
Network layer model
RAID
A brief history of UNIX
UNIX SAs are often asked to check if “everything is OK.” This book will teach you how to start that investigation. Then, when you go to your systems administrators, you will be able to ask better questions. This will get you to the heart of your issue that much more quickly.
