SYA810

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SYA810 - System Administration II

Professor

SYA810 is taught by User:Chris Tyler (Winter 2009)

Weekly Outline

See the Winter 2009 SYA810 Weekly Schedule for specific dates and topics.

Subject Description

This subject is a continuation of SYA710. Students will continue their exploration of various Linux technologies. Particular attention will be paid to server-class system configuration. Where possible, Fedora Core will be the Linux distribution of choice in this course

Credit Status

1 credit in the LUX program.

Prerequisites

SYA710

Specific Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this subject students should be able to:

• Configure, use, and manage Logical Volume Management
• Configure, use, and manage RAID arrays
• Configure, use, and manage USB devices
• Understand the basic principles of Storage Area Networks
• Configure, use, and manage iSCSI targets and initiators
• Understand Linux memory management
• Monitor and improve system performance
• Create and use Linux software installation packages (RPMs)
• Design and implement effective backup and recovery strategies
• Configure, use, and manage Virtual Machines (using Xen, KVM, or other technologies)

Topic Outline:

• General Device Principles - 5%
  • Device nodes
  • Udev
  • Psudeo-filesystems: sysfs, procfs, ptsfs, usbdevfs
  • PCI, PCIE, HotPlug PCI, MiniPCI, PC Card/PCMCIA devices

• Advanced Disk Block Devices - 10%
  • Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)
  • Logical Volume Management (LVM)

• Package Management - 20%
  • Using RPMs
  • Creating RPMs
  • Using repositories

• System Monitoring and Backup - 15%
  • Backup and recovery strategies
  • Backup media selection
  • Backup cycles
  • syslog, dmesg
  • cron, batch
  • cpio, tar, pax
  • vmstat, sar, free, w/uptime
  • strace

• Memory and Performance Management - 10%
  • Pages
  • Demand loading
  • Memory mapping
  • No-execute (NX/XD) and ExecShield
  • Shared object library linking
  • Copy-on-write
  • Swap

• Storage Area Networks - 10%
  • Interconnect technologies (SCSI, iSCSI, fc, ib)
  • Global Filesystem (GFS)

• USB - 10%
  • Physical connections
  • Power
  • Logical structure
  • Descriptors
  • Utilities
  • USB storage using SCSI CCS

• Virtualization - 20%
  • Linux virtualization technologies on the x86 platform (Xen, KVM)
  • VM management
  • VM image preparation

Modes Of Instruction

2 hours interactive lecture per week, and 2 hours lab time per week

Prescribed Text

• Fedora Linux by Chris Tyler; ISBN 0-596-52682-2 published by O'Reilly & Associates

Reference Material

• Course Wiki

Promotion Policy

To obtain a credit in this subject, a student must:

• Achieve a grade of 55% or better on the final exam
• Satisfactorily complete all assignments
• Achieve a weighted average of 55% or better for the tests and final exam
• Achieve a grade of 55% or better on the overall course

Modes of Evaluation

• 20% Group Project
• 15% Lab Work (labs, quizzes, and assignments)
• 25% One Midterm Test
• 40% Final Exam