BSc: System And Network Administration
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System and Network Administration
- Course name: System and Network Administration
- Code discipline: ?
- Subject area:
Short Description
This course covers the following concepts: Unix & system tuning; Free and Open Source licensing; Firmware & boot loaders; Disks & partitioning; Daemons’ setup and operation; Text processing tools & Regular Expressions; Backup & Monitoring; Network fundamentals; Link aggregation; DNS fundamentals; Network discovery & sniffing; Introduction to spoofing and man in the middle; Cryptography from a practical perspective; High Availability clusters; Load-balancing clusters; File-systems & shared-disk file-systems; Storage clusters & distributed block devices; Virtualization clusters; Automated provisioning & configuration automation.
Prerequisites
Prerequisite subjects
Prerequisite topics
Course Topics
| Section | Topics within the section |
|---|---|
| Infrastructure fundamentals |
|
| Network & Security |
|
| Storage & clusters |
|
Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
What is the main purpose of this course?
This course covers the system and network administration for GNU/Linux and BSD operating systems. The students with the minor of security and blockchain must be able to operate GNU/Linux as their main server-oriented system and perform different tasks such as setting up and operating various tools and daemons. This is a very essential course for the security expert which will give the students hands-on experience of system deployment, firmware, booting, partitions, volume management, system and network optimization. At the end of this course, the students will be equipped with the tools and skills that they can use in industrial production environments. This course is practice-oriented similarly to a certification training. After completion, the students could be entitled as (junior) system and network analysts.
ILOs defined at three levels
Level 1: What concepts should a student know/remember/explain?
By the end of the course, the students should be able to ...
- Free and Open-Source Software paradigms
- Principles of the Unix culture
- Linux bonding modes and link aggregation
- CA vs intermediate vs leaf SSL certificates
- High Availability cluster architecture
- Load-balancing cluster architecture
- Virtualization architecture
- Distributed storage architecture
- Convergence and hyper-convergence
Level 2: What basic practical skills should a student be able to perform?
By the end of the course, the students should be able to ...
- In-depth operational knowledge of GNU/Linux and system daemons
- How GIT differs from CVS
- How rather critical IT infrastructures are handled
- Difference between caching DNS forwarder and an authoritative DNS service
- Requirements and use-cases for High Availability
- Requirements and use-cases for load-balancing
- Requirements and use-cases for virtualization
- Requirements and use-cases for distributed storage
- Challenges & constraints with convergence and hyper-convergence
- Requirements to automate the deployments of several servers at once
Level 3: What complex comprehensive skills should a student be able to apply in real-life scenarios?
By the end of the course, the students should be able to ...
- System & daemons troubleshooting - read the logs
- Install a GNU/Linux system and configure it for it to be used a server
- Fix the boot-loader or recover the root account
- Use Version Control Systems
- Build software daemons from source
- Build the Linux kernel from source
- Design the architecture of IT infrastructures
- Deploy and maintain IT infrastructures
- Network troubleshooting - check for open ports
- Setting up network link aggregations
- Securing SSL web browser sessions
- SSL cipher suites tuning
- Bootstrap guest machines from the host
- Deal with RAW and QCOW2 sparse files
- Evaluate the need for network disks (block devices)
- Evaluate the need for network file-systems versus shared-disk file-systems
Grading
Course grading range
| Grade | Range | Description of performance |
|---|---|---|
| A. Excellent | 90-100 | - |
| B. Good | 80-89 | - |
| C. Satisfactory | 70-79 | - |
| D. Poor | 0-69 | - |
Course activities and grading breakdown
| Activity Type | Percentage of the overall course grade |
|---|---|
| Labs/seminar classes | 70 |
| Interim performance assessment | 10 |
| Exams | 20 |
Recommendations for students on how to succeed in the course
Resources, literature and reference materials
Open access resources
- Joshua Davies, Implementing SSL / TLS Using Cryptography and PKI, Wiley Publishing, 2011
- Eric Raymond, The Cathedral & the Bazaar, O’Reilly Media, 2008
- Æleen Frisch, Essential System Administration, Third Edition, O’Reilly & Associates, 2002
- Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass, and Trent R. Hein, UNIX System Administration Handbook, Third Edition, Prentice Hall, 2000
- Mark Sobell, A Practical Guide to the Unix System, Third Edition, Addison-Wesley, 1994
- GNU Manuals Online https://www.gnu.org/manual/manual.html
- The Linux Kernel documentation https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/
- The Revised Slackware Book Project https://www.slackbook.org/
Closed access resources
Software and tools used within the course
Teaching Methodology: Methods, techniques, & activities
Activities and Teaching Methods
| Learning Activities | Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Development of individual parts of software product code | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Homework and group projects | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Formative Assessment and Course Activities
Ongoing performance assessment
Section 1
| Activity Type | Content | Is Graded? |
|---|---|---|
| Question | What is the difference between MIT, BSD and GPL licenses? | 1 |
| Question | How do those licensing models differ in terms of ethical and rhetorical goals? | 1 |
| Question | What characterizes the Unix system in terms of usability? | 1 |
| Question | How to troubleshoot system and daemons? | 0 |
| Question | Install a GNU/Linux system and configure it for it to be used a server | 0 |
| Question | Fix the boot-loader or recover the root account | 0 |
| Question | Use Version Control Systems | 0 |
| Question | Build software daemons from source | 0 |
| Question | Build the Linux kernel from source | 0 |
| Question | Design the architecture of IT infrastructures | 0 |
| Question | Deploy and operate IT infrastructures e.g. a helpdesk and bug tracking engine | 0 |
Section 2
| Activity Type | Content | Is Graded? |
|---|---|---|
| Question | Choose a Linux bonding mode and explain its pros/cons, then setup link aggregation with it | 1 |
| Question | Create a self-signed certificate, set it up against e.g. an HTTP service and use it from your browser | 1 |
| Question | Create a CA and sign a few certificates, see how your browser behaves compared to a self-signed certificate | 1 |
| Question | How to troubleshoot network issues? | 0 |
| Question | How to setup network link aggregations? | 0 |
| Question | What are the requirements for an authoritative DNS service to be up and running? | 0 |
| Question | How to verify SSL certificates and sessions? | 0 |
| Question | How to tune SSL cipher suites for a service? | 0 |
Section 3
| Activity Type | Content | Is Graded? |
|---|---|---|
| Question | How is a High Availability cluster architecture designed? | 1 |
| Question | How is a Load-balancing cluster architecture designed? | 1 |
| Question | How is a Virtualization architecture designed? | 1 |
| Question | How is a Distributed storage architecture designed? | 1 |
| Question | How are Convergence and hyper-convergence designed? | 1 |
| Question | How to bootstrap guest machines from the host? | 0 |
| Question | How to deal with RAW and QCOW2 sparse files? | 0 |
| Question | How does network disks (block devices) compare to virtual disks as sparse files? | 0 |
| Question | How does network file-systems compare with shared-disk file-systems? | 0 |
Final assessment
Section 1
- How to disable recent hardware mitigations in the Linux kernel?
- How to disable IPv6 at boot time?
- How GIT repositories does differ from CVS repositories in terms of architecture?
- What are the requirements to get a robust and spam-unfriendly Mail eXchange up and running?
Section 2
- What is the difference between caching DNS forwarder and an authoritative DNS service?
Section 3
- What are the architectural requirements and use-cases for High Availability?
- What are the architectural requirements and use-cases for load-balancing?
- What are the architectural requirements and use-cases for virtualization?
- What are the architectural requirements and use-cases for distributed storage?
- What are the challenges & constraints when attempting to define a convergent or even a hyper-convergent virtualization infrastructure setup?
- What are the requirements to automate the deployments of several servers at once?
The retake exam
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3