ADMIN #23 - Digital Issue

Features

SSL Best Practices
SSL and TLS are complex technologies. If you want to avoid wading through cryptography manuals to harden your HTTPS web server, we offer practical recommendations on establishing, securing, and optimizing your SSL/ TLS configuration.

SSL Libraries
The Heartbleed bug shocked the security community and seriously damaged the reputation of OpenSSL. Luckily, alternatives such as LibreSSL, PolarSSL, and GnuTLS are waiting in the wings.

DevOps
DevOps makes IT departments more efficient and makes their employees happier – but what is it? We describe some basic ingredients of the DevOps recipe.

TCP Wrappers + knockd
TCP Wrappers and port knocking will help you ensure that the data on your computers remains accessible only by you and those with whom you want to share.

Tools

Ceph and GlusterFS
Many shared storage solutions are currently vying for users’ favor; we compare a pair of leading alternatives.

ZFS on Linux
The BSD-based FreeNAS storage system can cause Linux admins problems when attempting to reconstruct data.

FIDO Alliance
The FIDO Alliance is working to build open solutions for the future of authentication.

Free Tools for AD
You don’t have to spend a lot of money on expensive tools to analyze data on your Active Directory network. A number of free utilities can help you keep up.

Log Parser Studio
Microsoft’s free Log Parser Studio tool offers a single view for analyzing the logfiles of Windows systems and services.

Sheepdog
The Sheepdog distributed storage tool exhibits pronounced doggedness and deserves appropriate attention. We’ll show you how to set up a sheepdog cluster.

Management

Chef or Puppet?
Puppet and Chef are competing open source tools for configuration management. Which tool is right for your network? We point out some pros and cons.

ZooKeeper
Anyone who manages many clusters should be meticulous in ensuring that organized processes prevail in the distributed server zoo.

Nuts and Bolts

SSH and sFTP Config
The scope and functionality of SSH and sFTP provide secure, reliable file transfers.

PowerShell Tips
The Windows PowerShell web-based console lets you run PowerShell commands and scripts in your browser.

Top-Like Tools
Admins solve problems ranging from slow servers to failing applications. The go-to tool when you need to check on a server with shell access should be Top.

/proc Filesystem
The /proc filesystem facilitates the exchange of current data between the system and user. To access the data, you simply read and write to a file. This mechanism is the first step for understanding kernel programming.