Critical system Administration tasks

[Dave Geiger]

Hi Guys,

I thought I would just start a thread which involves any System Administration critical tasks that any of the forum members handled recently or in the past, from which other forum members can learn.So I request all of guys to share your critical system administration task experiences which would be of great help to others.

Thanks
Dave

[Matthew_50]

Hi, Dave,

1. If the system don't have monitor mechanism, then build one, such as CPU, Memory, swap usage.

2. The daily check is also important, though daily check, you can prevent the serious event or outage.

3. Study or learn the know how about the application which build over your critical systems.

Best regards,
Matthew.

[morganelan]

In my daily sysadmin tasks are:
1.Check these following files for crash issues:
/var/adm/crash
/etc/shutdownlog
/var/tombstones/ts99
/var/opt/resmon/log/event.log
If there is nothing indication that come from the above files , then it is probably because of a power failure occured for a short time.

2.Checks the LED's on the front panel of your server,storage,library,sanswitches etc. This because LED indication can give quite a lot of information about erros and failures.
Monitoing the log files is another good practice,log into GSP/MP and check event logs ,var/adm/syslog/syslog is a main file which can give indication to the h/w erros or OS errors .
/var/adm/cron/log
/var/adm/sudolog/sudo.log
/var/adm/sulog
/var/mail/root

3. Check dmesg outputs.
4. Check multiple paths to storage (If you have)
5. Check all lan cards and FC for proper functioing or error messages.
6. Check file system utilizations.
7. Taking ignite backups for OS and applications & data backup.
8.Setup EMS for alerting the errors that come from your hardware

[Arunvijai_4]

1) Regular backup of filesystem
2) Monitoring disk usage per user.
3) Routine check up of syslog and dmesg.
4) Patch work to the OS.
5) Software updates (if any)

-Arun

[Steven E. Protter]

Create script to monitor the following areas:

1) diskpace, via bdf
2) hardware areas via dmesg
3) what application daemons are supposed to be running.

Run these scripts periodically via cron. There are dozens of good monitor scripts via the sysadmin posts that you can download and copy to your own purposes.

I think the most important thing to do is make sure your Ignite make_tape_recovery backups happen regularly and that some of the tapes are rotated off site.

SEP

[VEL_1]

Hi,

Here is the important tasks:

* To keep the systems running.
* To plan and implement upgrades and new services.
* To plan for disaster, minimising the risk and the potential damage, including backups and disaster recovery planning.
* To resolve any systems problems that crop up or, better yet, to see the warning signs and head them off before they become a problem.
* To keep my skills up-to-date.
* To be a knowledge resource for the company.

Thanks.

[Muthukumar_5]

Setup mail in your system to system administration team to make notification mails to do the following,

1) File system usage
2) System CPU%, Memory utilization
3) Number of users active now and their disk usage
4) System critical errors
5) Log file rotation and removal
6) Backup & Recovery of important files

Make scripts and automate with cron jobs. You can also setup html gui generated by shell or perl or php and automated with cron jobs.

hth.

[VIKAS AGRAWAL]

Hi,

1. check for filesystem space by bdf & if space is going to be more then 98% then do the cleaning.

2. check dmesg & mails of root user as it will give u any kind of hardware error in system .

3. If u have nickel script then do a system check by it & keep it with u for future refrence. run it atleast once in a quarter .

4. Make ignite bootable tape atleast once in quarter so that u can store the system in case of any disaster .

5. check system performance by top,sar command