Preface

Gnu/Linux is the most important OS in the data center but how do you leverage it? How do you maintain and contain it? Many Gnu/Linux distributions try to answer these questions, but not all succeed. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is one that does answer these questions.

The next question is how do you, as a system administrator, manage a RHEL infrastructure? How do you deploy not just one system, but many? How do you make sure that it is secure and up to date? How can you monitor system components?

It may seem odd to you, but as a Red Hat Certified Engineer, I prefer the "lazy" approach—not as in "I can't be bothered," but as in "I like to do something once and do it good the first time and spend the rest of my time doing fun stuff."

In this book, I try to show you how to set up and configure systems, mainly by providing useful information to automate the setup, configuration, and management. This also explains the lack of the use of a GUI in this book. I'll be honest with you; I couldn't live without one on my laptop or desktop, but I do not believe servers should have a GUI. GUI-based applications tend not to have command-line counterparts, and I solemnly believe that if you cannot install, configure, manage, and maintain a piece of software through a script, it does not belong on a server.

This book does not pretend to be the de facto answer to all questions (that would be 42), but I do hope that you will learn something new and that, in turn, you will put this knowledge to good use. Remember, with great power, comes great responsibility!