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Solaris 10 Systems Administration Part 1 — A 5-Day Course

Synopsis

This five-day course is designed to cover the essential administration tasks confronting today's Sun systems administrators. It covers all basic workstation administration functions, with full hands-on experience at all stages. The Solaris 10 Visual Administration Solaris Management Console (SMC) is also covered. For network administrators, this course should be followed by the Solaris 10 System Administration Part 2. This course is also suitable for Solaris 8 and 9 and additional notes are provided.

Our Solaris courses are suitable training for Solaris Certification.

This course is comparable with the SUN SA-200-S10 System Administration for the Solaris 10 Operating System Part 1 course (formerly Intermediate Solaris 10 Systems Administration), but about 38% less in cost.

Prerequisites

Knowledge of Solaris up to a level taught in our Introduction to Solaris course is important, and some previous administration experience is helpful. Please call if you require any advice.

Follow-up

Solaris 10 System Administration Part 2, which covers essential network administration, followed by Solaris Advanced Systems Administration.

The above two courses are the equivalent of Sun's SA-299 course, which leads to the Sun Certified Administrator (part 2) exam.

Our Solaris Utilities and Shell Programming is another popular course for administrators wishing to gain knowledge of shell programming and Solaris utilities, with special emphasis on the needs of the administrator.

This course is part of a program which can lead you to Solaris Certification

Publicly scheduled dates, locations, and prices

Harwell, Oxfordshire — £1300 (+VAT)

  • 23–27 Jun 2008

Newark, Nottinghamshire — £1300 (+VAT)

  • 8–12 Sep 2008

Contents

System Administration Overview

  • Sun Hardware types
  • Solaris Operating Environment configurations
  • Review of administration functions

File System Structure

  • File system structure and slicing
  • The Solaris directory hierarchy
    • Identification of files and file types
    • Using symbolic and hard links

Disk Storage Management for local disk drives

  • Disk concepts and structure; slices (partitions) and Solaris device naming conventions
  • Physical disk connection
  • Listing and reconfiguring the systems devices
  • Slicing and labelling disks with the format and fmthard utilities and the Solaris Management Console (smc)
  • Creating a Solaris file system with newfs
  • Using tunefs to change file system parameters
  • Deciding how to mount the new files system; updating /etc/vfstab for permanent mounts
  • Using fsck to perform file system integrity checks. Monitoring disk usage and directory sizes

An Introduction to ZFS

ZFS is a new disk storage pool and file system present in the main Solaris release update 2 of June 2006. This section gives a good practical introduction to using ZFS.

  • Creating a storage pool
  • Adding further devices
  • Removing a poll
  • Creating file systems within a pool
  • The ZFS browser-based GUI

File System Maintenance and Security

  • The mount command
  • Mount options
  • The cachefs and LOFS file systems
  • Handling CD and floppy disks
  • USB and Firewire devices
  • Making room on the file system
  • File system security
  • SMC file system functions
  • Utilities for file system monitoring

System Build (Installing Solaris)

  • Planning disk layout
  • Booting from CD, DVD or network to build
  • Building Solaris from scratch; selecting software options, disk slicing, etc.
  • Post-installation procedures
  • Overview of automatic installation
  • Upgrading from a previous Solaris release

Patch Administration

  • Obtaining and installing the latest patches, including clusters and individual patches
  • Examining the current patch level of a machine
  • Removing patches
  • An introduction to Sun Update Connection for automatic updates and patches

Software Configuration and Package Administration

  • How to set up and customise a variety of tools, including shells, Common Desktop Environment, manual pages and AnswerBook
  • Examining, Installing and removing software packages using command line utilities, including Solaris distribution options
  • Using the Webstart installer mechanism to install software
  • Using the Solaris Product Registry (prodreg)

Boot PROM

  • Monitor prompt commands (boot, probe-scsi, probe-ide, test-net, devalias etc.)
  • Identifying system settings such as the default boot device
  • Using the eeprom command to view and change settings
  • Troubleshooting boot failure

Start-up and Shutdown

  • In-depth explanation of the new Service Management Facility (SMF)
  • Using SMF utilities to monitor and control boot processes
  • Modifying SMF properties with svccfg
  • Self healing and Process Contracts
  • SMF repositories and recovery
  • Adding your own scripts and SMF service descriptions at system boot
  • SMF milestones
  • Understanding and changing run levels
  • Shutting down, suspending and powering off the system
  • Power management
  • Additional information for previous Solaris versions
  • Notes on using the GRUB bootloader on Intel platforms

Adding and Maintaining Users

  • Concepts
  • Ownership of files, directories and processes
  • Classes of user
  • Adding a user manually, via command line tools and graphically
  • User initialisation file management
  • Password control
  • Real and effective id
  • Using SMC for user management
  • Introduction to Role Based Access Control (RBAC) facilities

Solaris Groups

  • Overview
  • The group file
  • Group identification of files and directories
  • The newgrp, groups and chgrp commands
  • Complete example of creating and using a group
  • Using SMC with groups

System Security

  • Monitoring access to the system
  • Using the su (Switch User) command, and monitoring its use
  • Restricting file and directory access using protection mechanisms, including access modes, s and t bits, umask, chown and chmod
  • Introduction to Access Control Lists (ACLs)

Adding a Printer

  • Overview
  • Printer types and connection methods, including network printers
  • Software modifications
  • Spooling system commands
  • Administrator control commands
  • Remote printer facilities
  • Printer classes
  • Using the Solaris GUIs for printer management
  • Specifying both system and user default printer destinations

System Processes

  • Examining and controlling processes using ps, kill, and the Process Manager
  • Automating commands with crontab and at, for one-off and regular command execution

Back-Up and Restore Utilities, including snapshots

  • Overview and Preparation
  • Tape types and capacities
  • Sample ufsdump commands
  • Backup strategies
  • Taking a complete backup with ufsdump
  • Summary of ufsdump command options
  • Using fssnap to snapshot the file system and take a clean backup
  • Restoring individual files and directories
  • Restoring an entire system
  • Considerations for disaster recovery
  • The tar, cpio and mt utilities
  • Backups versus archives

Solaris training UK enquiries

UK Training enquiries and feedback form.

Solaris training UK prices

For publicly scheduled training (individual places), see our UK training schedule.

In-house training for company groups is charged at a daily rate per group — see our In-House UK Training Guidelines.

Publicly Scheduled Training Locations

We currently run public training courses in the following locations:

  • London, UK
  • Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK
  • Birmingham, West Midlands, UK
  • Carshalton, Surrey, UK
  • Chester, North West, UK
  • Coventry, West Midlands, UK
  • Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
  • Glasgow, Scotland, UK
  • Harwell, Oxfordshire, UK
  • Manchester, North West, UK
  • Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, UK
  • Newark, Nottinghamshire, UK
  • Reading, Berkshire, UK
  • Slough, Berkshire, UK
  • Stevenage, Hertfordshire, UK
  • Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK
  • Wokingham, Berkshire, UK

Most UK public training courses are available on a monthly basis.

Please see the individual course outlines or our public training schedule for details.

In-house (on-site) training locations

We deliver in-house courses at client premises and/or training facilities in any part of the world which is practically and commercially accessible.

Our In-house training guidelines outline our basic requirements and our UK pricing structure. To estimate costs for training in other countries, simply convert to your local currency and then make a rough calculation of our tutor's costs for travelling to and staying at your location.


West Yorkshire Office

GBdirect Ltd
Training Division
Bradford Design Exchange
34 Peckover Street
BRADFORD
BD1 5BD
West Yorkshire
United Kingdom

training@gbdirect.co.uk

Training: 0800 651 0338
General: +44 (0)870 200 7273
Finance: +44 (0)1353 615 174

Please call between 0900 and 1700 (UK time) on Monday to Friday


South East Regional Office

GBdirect Ltd
Training Division
18 Lynn Rd
ELY
CB6 1DA
Cambridgeshire
United Kingdom

training@gbdirect.co.uk

Training: 0800 651 0338
General: +44 (0)870 200 7273
Finance: +44 (0)1353 615 174

Please call between 0900 and 1700 (UK time) on Monday to Friday


Please note:
Non-training enquiries should be directed, initially, to our UK national office in Bradford (West Yorkshire), even if the enquiry concerns services delivered in London or South/East England. Clients in London and the South East will typically be handled by staff working in the London or Cambridge areas.