Charlie Schluting

When asked about security on a multi-user Linux system, a wise man once said “everyone is root if you allow them to login as a user.” There is plenty of truth in that, but embracing imminent compromise isn’t always acceptable. Let’s take a look at how you can limit your exposure while letting unknown and […]

Though not strictly aimed at network administrators, the fruits of the “getting things done” (GTD) craze certainly provide useful tools for us Unix and Cisco geeks. GTD, a work and time management strategy outlined in David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done”, really applies to everyone: Office workers and admins alike have been horribly dependent on […]

We all know that Linux is available free of cost, so we’re going to skip that argument and consider things from a functional perspective. We’d like to discuss a few of the basic things people really need to do with servers, and try to figure out which operating system is best suited for these roles. […]

SAN (Storage Area Network) solutions have historically targeted large, enterprise-grade consumers. With prices continually dropping, SAN storage is looking more and more attractive to budget-constrained operations. The technology is also changing, and there’s some new and exciting terminology to learn. This article’s goal is to provide a very light introduction to SAN technologies and bring […]

Many new workstations and servers are coming with integrated gigabit (define) network cards, but quite a few people soon discover that they can’t transfer data much faster than they did with 100 Mb/s network cards. Multiple factors can affect your ability to transfer at higher speeds, and most of them revolve around operating system settings. […]