It is very easy for an UNIX administrator to manage couple of hosts by remote logins but the moment the server count goes beyond 100s, it becomes a challenge to control the number of changes and roll over compliant configuration or changes to all the hosts. This training program is meant to help the administrators in automating the administration. Below are the benefits and details about this training program.

Benefits

1. Policy compliance (SOX, SAS70, ISO 27001, etc.)
2. Quick audit
3. Self-repairing of configuration files
4. Proactive planning than reactive troubleshooting
5. Change management
6. Reduced errors
7. Automate operations
8. Quick and easy recovery
9. Version controlled configuration
10. More servers per administrator
11. Higher utilization of existing resources
12. Brings human resource focus towards strategic planning
13. Centralized control over entire UNIX environment
14. Effectively manage 100s or 1000s of servers with lower human resources
15. No license fee
16. Improved SLAs
17. High return on investment

Target Audience

UNIX Administrators – CentOS, Darwin, Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Mandriva, OpenBSD, Oracle Linux, RHEL, Sun Solaris, SuSE Linux, Ubuntu

Mandatory Pre-requisites

Basic UNIX concepts – User Management, file management, user management, package management, networking concepts

Helpful Pre-requisites

Advanced UNIX concepts - Server Administration, policy management
Basic ITIL concepts – Change Management, Problem Management, Service Level Management, Release Management

Detailed Course Outline:

UNIX Referesher

Basic Commands
User Management
Files & Directory Management
Package Management
Service Configuration

Automation Basics

Kickstart, Jumpstart, preseed, etc.
SSH keys, perl/shell scripts, cron

Automation Challenges

Automating hundreds or thousands of UNIX servers or desktops
Many UNIX Administrators
Change Management
Configuration Management
Centralized Management
Configuration Version Control
Centralized Package Management
Centralized User Management
Desktop/Server Centralized Policies

Automation Roadmap

Centralized Configuration Management Framework - Puppet

Introduction to Puppet

Working Architecture
Language Introduction

Puppet Installation

Prerequisites
Source Installation
Package Installation
Installing Support Packages
Installation using gem

Puppet Configuration

Configuring Server
Configuring Client
Registering Clients

Installation & Configuration Hands-on Workshop

Using Puppet

Define Resources
Resource Attributes
Classes and Subclasses
Relationship
Inheritance
Definitions
Arrays
Conditional Statements

Creating Nodes

Node Inheritance
Default Nodes
Node Conditionals

Facts

Introduction
Benefits
Usage

Resource Types

Sample Configuration Management

Cron Jobs
Host Files
DNS files
Squid Proxy

Real Business Case

Hands-on workshop on using Puppet

Q&A