IT Operations

If you’ve ever spent hours renaming files or updating hundreds of spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. But what if you could have your computer do them for you?

In this fully revised second edition of the best-selling classic Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, you’ll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand—no prior programming experience required. You'll learn the basics of Python and explore Python’s rich library of modules for performing specific tasks, like scraping data off websites, reading PDF and Word documents, and automating clicking and typing tasks.

The second edition of this international fan favorite includes a brand-new chapter on input validation, as well as tutorials on automating Gmail and Google Sheets, plus tips on automatically updating CSV files. You’ll learn how to create programs that effortlessly perform useful feats of automation to:

• Search for text in a file or across multiple files
• Create, update, move, and rename files and folders
• Search the Web and download online content
• Update and format data in Excel spreadsheets of any size
• Split, merge, watermark, and encrypt PDFs
• Send email responses and text notifications
• Fill out online forms

Step-by-step instructions walk you through each program, and updated practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks.

Don't spend your time doing work a well-trained monkey could do. Even if you've never written a line of code, you can make your computer do the grunt work. Learn how in Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition.

Use this guide book in its fully updated second edition to study for the ITIL 4 Foundation certification exam. Know the latest ITIL framework and DevOps concepts.

The book will take you through the new ITIL framework and nuances of the DevOps methodology. The book follows the topics included in the foundation certification exam syllabus and includes new sections on ITIL's guiding principles, service value chain, and the four dimensions of service management. Also included are the concepts, processes, and philosophies used in DevOps programs and projects. ITIL and DevOps concepts are explained with relevant examples.

By the time you finish this book, you will have a complete understanding of ITIL 4 and will be ready to take the ITIL 4 Foundation certification exam. You will know the DevOps methodology and how ITIL reinforces the philosophy of shared responsibility and collaboration. Over the course of a week, even while working your day job, you will be prepared to take the exam.

What You Will Learn

• Know the basics of ITIL as you prepare for the ITIL Foundation certification exam
• Understand ITIL through examples
• Be aware of ITIL's relevance to DevOps and DevOps concepts

Who This Book Is For

Professionals from the IT services industry

IMAP (the Internet Message Access Protocol) allows clients to access their email on a remote server, whether from the office, a remote location, or a cell phone or other device. IMAP is powerful and flexible, but it's also complicated to set up; it's more difficult to implement than POP3 and more error-prone for both client and server.

The Book of IMAP offers a detailed introduction to IMAP and POP3, the two protocols that govern all modern mail servers and clients. You'll learn how the protocols work as well as how to install, configure, and maintain the two most popular open source mail systems, Courier and Cyrus.

Authors Peer Heinlein and Peer Hartleben have set up hundreds of mail servers and offer practical hints about troubleshooting errors, migration, filesystem tuning, cluster setups, and password security that will help you extricate yourself from all sorts of tricky situations. You'll also learn how to:

• Create and use shared folders, virtual domains, and user quotas
• Authenticate user data with PAM, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and LDAP
• Handle heavy traffic with load balancers and proxies
• Use built-in tools for server analysis, maintenance, and repairs
• Implement complementary webmail clients like Squirrelmail and Horde/IMP
• Set up and use the Sieve email filter

Thoroughly commented references to the POP and IMAP protocols round out the book, making The Book of IMAP an essential resource for even the most experienced system administrators.

OpenBSD’s stateful packet filter, PF, is the heart of the OpenBSD firewall. With more and more services placing high demands on bandwidth and an increasingly hostile Internet environment, no sysadmin can afford to be without PF expertise.

The third edition of The Book of PF covers the most up-to-date developments in PF, including new content on IPv6, dual stack configurations, the “queues and priorities” traffic-shaping system, NAT and redirection, wireless networking, spam fighting, failover provisioning, logging, and more.

You’ll also learn how to:

• Create rule sets for all kinds of network traffic, whether crossing a simple LAN, hiding behind NAT, traversing DMZs, or spanning bridges or wider networks
• Set up wireless networks with access points, and lock them down using authpf and special access restrictions
• Maximize flexibility and service availability via CARP, relayd, and redirection
• Build adaptive firewalls to proactively defend against attackers and spammers
• Harness OpenBSD’s latest traffic-shaping system to keep your network responsive, and convert your existing ALTQ configurations to the new system
• Stay in control of your traffic with monitoring and visualization tools (including NetFlow)

The Book of PF is the essential guide to building a secure network with PF. With a little effort and this book, you’ll be well prepared to unlock PF’s full potential.

"This book left me totally impressed at the breadth of capabilities offered by PF...I can recommend it to anyone with an interest (professional or otherwise) in network management." —Computing Reviews

This highly effective self-study exam guide has been thoroughly updated to cover 100% of the topics covered on the latest version of the exam. This new edition includes expanded coverage of mobile computing, cloud and virtualization services, Windows 10, Linux, enhanced security, and advanced software troubleshooting procedures.

CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide, Eleventh Edition (Exam 220-1101 & 220-1102) enables you to take the test with complete confidence. In keeping with the All-In-One philosophy, the book serves both as an exam guide and as a practical reference for IT support and technical personnel. Online content includes 200 accurate practice questions, sample Mike Meyers training videos, sample TotalSim interactive lab simulations, Mike’s favorite PC hardware Cool Tools, and a searchable PDF glossary.

• Online content includes 200 practice questions, sample video training featuring Mike Meyers, sample Total Sim interactive lab simulations, and a searchable PDF glossary
• Contains a coupon for 10% off of the exam fee—a $46 value
• Written by experienced trainer Scott Jernigan and edited by training guru Mike Meyers

The Fifth Edition of the CompTIA A+ Complete Study Guide: Core 1 Exam 220-1101 and Core 2 Exam 220-1102 offers accessible and essential test preparation material for the popular A+ certification. Providing full coverage of all A+ exam objectives and competencies covered on the latest Core 1 and Core 2 exams, the book ensures you'll have the skills and knowledge to confidently succeed on the test and in the field as a new or early-career computer technician.

The book presents material on mobile devices, hardware, networking, virtualization and cloud computing, network, hardware, and software troubleshooting, operating systems, security, and operational procedures. Comprehensive discussions of all areas covered by the exams will give you a head start as you begin your career as a computer technician.

This new edition also offers:

• Accessible and easy-to-follow organization perfect to prepare you for one of the most popular certification exams on the market today
• Opportunities to practice skills that are in extraordinary demand in the IT industry
• Access to the Sybex online test bank, with chapter review questions, full-length practice exams, hundreds of electronic flashcards, and a glossary of key terms

Perfect for anyone prepping for the Core 1 and Core 2 A+ exams, CompTIA A+ Complete Study Guide: Core 1 Exam 220-1101 and Core 2 Exam 220-1102 is a must-have resource for new and early-career computer technicians seeking to improve their skills and increase their efficacy in the field.

Cybersecurity for Small Networks is a straightforward guide to improving network security whether you’re running Linux, Windows, or macOS.

As you work through the book’s projects, you’ll learn core hardening techniques like how to map a network, track the status of devices, and recognize unusual activity that might signal an attack. You’ll explore ways to eliminate vulnerabilities and prevent unwanted access to mobile, desktop, or even IoT endpoints. You’ll also learn how to implement custom back-up strategies and how to detect, prevent, and mitigate malware or ransomware attacks.

On the still more technical side, you will:

• Use and configure firewalls like pfSense and iptables to filter network traffic
• Create a network segmentation plan to separate devices by risk, manage user access, and configure wireless authentication
• Deploy OpenVPN or Wireguard network-wide to encrypt and protect network communication
• Use a Squid proxy to obfuscate personal or business data and control web traffic
• Implement a traffic access point (TAP) to capture and analyze network traffic, and build a Security Onion monitoring appliance to alert you to suspicious activity
• No matter your level of experience, Cybersecurity for Small Networks will arm you with the tools and knowledge you need to lock down your network, and defend and recover from attacks.

Learn Active Directory Management in a Month of Lunches is a practical, hands-on tutorial designed for IT pros new to Active Directory. It skips the theory and concentrates on the day-to-day administration tasks you need to know to keep your network running smoothly. Just set aside an hour a day for a month — lunchtime would be perfect — and you'll be comfortable and productive with Active Directory before you know it.

Learn System Center Configuration Manager in a Month of Lunches is a super-practical guide to Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager. In this book, you'll cut to the chase and learn the administrative procedures and techniques that will keep your systems humming smoothly.

Learn Windows IIS in a Month of Lunches is an innovative tutorial designed for busy administrators. Even if you have no prior exposure to IIS, you can follow the crisp explanations, examples, and exercises in this concise, easy-to-read book. Just set aside one hour a day -- lunchtime would be perfect -- for a month, and you'll be managing, securing, and automating IIS administrative tasks faster than you thought possible.

Among the text editors being used in the programming community, perhaps the most important family is vi and its derivatives. With this updated edition, Unix and Linux users will learn text editing basics for both vi and Vim ("vi improved") before moving on to advanced editing tools for each editor. Authors Arnold Robbins and Elbert Hannah cover the latest major releases of Vim, including 8.0 and 8.2.

If you're a programmer or computer analyst, or you work with browsers or command-line interfaces, using Vim can speed up your work and make complex tasks easier. You'll examine multiwindow editing, global search and replacement, and power tools for programmers, and learn how to write interactive macros and scripts to extend the editor--all in the easy-to-follow style that's made this book a classic.

• Go beyond the basics to learn which vi commands fit your specific needs
• Learn advanced vi tools that shift most of the editing burden to the computer
• Explore Vim tools that provide major improvements over vi
• Examine Vimâ??s multiwindow editing feature, a significant upgrade over vi
• Use Vim scripts to customize and tailor Vim to your needs
• Look at Vim in modern GUI environments with Graphical Vim (gvim)
• See Vim in the broader programming milieu, including usingit as an IDE

System administrators need to stay ahead of new security vulnerabilities that leave their networks exposed every day. A firewall and an intrusion detection systems (IDS) are two important weapons in that fight, enabling you to proactively deny access and monitor network traffic for signs of an attack.

Linux Firewalls discusses the technical details of the iptables firewall and the Netfilter framework that are built into the Linux kernel, and it explains how they provide strong filtering, Network Address Translation (NAT), state tracking, and application layer inspection capabilities that rival many commercial tools. You'll learn how to deploy iptables as an IDS with psad and fwsnort and how to build a strong, passive authentication layer around iptables with fwknop.

Concrete examples illustrate concepts such as firewall log analysis and policies, passive network authentication and authorization, exploit packet traces, Snort ruleset emulation, and more with coverage of these topics:

• Passive network authentication and OS fingerprinting
• iptables log analysis and policies
• Application layer attack detection with the iptables string match extension
• Building an iptables ruleset that emulates a Snort ruleset
• Port knocking vs. Single Packet Authorization (SPA)
• Tools for visualizing iptables logs

Perl and C code snippets offer practical examples that will help you to maximize your deployment of Linux firewalls. If you're responsible for keeping a network secure, you'll find Linux Firewalls invaluable in your attempt to understand attacks and use iptables—along with psad and fwsnort—to detect and even prevent compromises.

Good system administrators recognize problems long before anyone asks, "Hey, is the Internet down?" Nagios, an open source system and network monitoring tool, has emerged as the most popular solution for sys admins in organizations of all sizes. It's robust but also complex, and Nagios: System and Network Monitoring, 2nd Edition, updated to address Nagios 3.0, will help you take full advantage of this program.

Nagios, which runs on Linux and most *nix variants, can be configured to continuously monitor network services such as SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, SSH, and FTP. It can also supervise host resources (processor load, disk and memory usage, running processes, log files, and so on) and environmental factors, such as temperature and humidity. This book is your guide to getting the most out of this versatile and powerful monitoring tool.

Inside Nagios, you’ll learn how to:

• Install and configure the Nagios core, all standard plugins, and selected third-party plugins
• Configure the notification system to alert you of ongoing problems—and to alarm others in case of a serious crisis
• Program event handlers to take automatic action when trouble occurs
• Write Perl plugins to customize Nagios for your unique needs
• Quickly understand your Nagios data using graphing and visualization tools
• Monitor Windows servers, SAP systems, and Oracle databases

The book also includes a chapter that highlights the differences between Nagios versions 2 and 3 and gives practical migration and compatibility tips. Nagios: System and Network Monitoring, 2nd Edition is a great starting point for configuring and using Nagios in your own environment.

• Download Chapter 5: "Designing Your Network" Are the machines in your office living isolated lives? Do you have a few computers at home that you want to connect to each other and the Internet? The best way to share files on a group of computers is to create a network. But how do you do that?

Network Know-How is your guide to connecting your machines, filled with practical advice that will show you how to get things done. You'll learn the nitty-gritty of network setup, design, and maintenance, from running cables and placing wireless access points to configuring file sharing and printing. This practical and comprehensive guide will teach you how to implement security, create intranets, and more. You'll learn how to:

• Connect Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers
• Implement network addressing
• Configure your network adapters, hubs, switches, and router
• Share music, photos, and documents
• Automate household appliances and stream digital audio and video to your home entertainment center
• Troubleshoot network slowdowns and failures

No matter which operating system you use, and even if you’ve never installed or run a network before, you’ll get what you need to know in Network Know-How.

Discover the power of Oracle Linux 8, the free and enterprise-grade Linux distribution designed for use in any environment, with this recipe-style book.

Starting with instructions on how to obtain Oracle Linux for both X86 and ARM-based platforms, this book walks you through various installation methods, from running it as a Windows service to installing it on a Raspberry Pi. It unravels advanced topics such as system upgrades using Leapp for major version transitions and using a PXE server and kickstart files for more advanced installations. The book then delves into swapping kernels to take advantage of Oracle’s UEK, exploring boot options, managing software with DNF, and achieving high availability. Detailed recipes involving security topics will assist with tasks such as data encryption, both at rest and in motion.

For developers, it offers guidance on building RPM files, using Docker and Podman in a containerized environment, working with AppStreams, and more. For large-scale deployments, the book introduces Oracle Linux Automation Manager for enterprise-level Ansible utilization, from setting up the Ansible server to basic playbook writing. Finally, you’ll discover strategies for cloud migration.

By the end of this book, you’ll possess a comprehensive toolkit that will elevate your skills as a Linux administrator.

What you will learn

• Master the use of DNF for package management and stream-specific installations
• Implement high availability services through Podman and Oracle Linux Automation Manager
• Secure your system with Secure Boot and at-rest disk encryption techniques
• Achieve rebootless system updates using the Ksplice technology
• Optimize large-scale deployments with Oracle Linux Automation Manager and Ansible
• Gain practical insights into storage management using Btrfs and LVM

Who this book is for

This book is for existing Oracle Linux system administrators and CentOS or RHEL admins contemplating a migration to Oracle Linux 8. A foundation of basic sysadmin skills is assumed as this is not an entry-level book; it's a cookbook focused on complex and lesser-known configurations specifically for Oracle Linux 8.

PowerShell and WMI is an example-driven guide for administrators managing networks of Windows servers and desktops. With 150 practical examples, including ready-to-reuse scripts and techniques, you'll learn the ins and outs of automating WMI via PowerShell v3. You'll find deep coverage of all aspects of Windows administration, including IIS, DNS and Hyper-V.

PowerShell® is both a scripting language and an administrative shell that lets you control and automate nearly every aspect of IT. In PowerShell for Sysadmins, five-time Microsoft® MVP “Adam the Automator” Bertram shows you how to use PowerShell to manage and automate your desktop and server environments so that you can head out for an early lunch.

You'll learn how to:

• Combine commands, control flow, handle errors, write scripts, run scripts remotely, and test scripts with the PowerShell testing framework, Pester
• Parse structured data like XML and JSON, work with common domains (like Active Directory, Azure, and Amazon Web Services), and create a real-world server inventory script
• Design and build a PowerShell module to demonstrate PowerShell isn’t just about ad-hoc scripts
• Use PowerShell to create a hands-off, completely automated Windows deployment
• Build an entire Active Directory forest from nothing but a Hyper-V host and a few ISO files
• Create endless Web and SQL servers with just a few lines of code!

Real-world examples throughout help bridge the gap between theory and actual system, and the author’s anecdotes keep things lively.

Stop with the expensive software and fancy consultants. Learn how to manage your own environment with PowerShell for Sysadmins and make everyone happy.

Covers Windows PowerShell v5.1

Take PowerShell beyond simple scripts and build time-saving automations for your team, your users, and the world.

In Practical Automation with PowerShell you will learn how to:

• Build PowerShell functions to automate common and complex tasks
• Create smart automations that are adaptable to new challenges
• Structure your code for sharing and reusability
• Store and secure your automations
• Execute automations with Azure Automation, Jenkins, Task Scheduler, and Cron
• Share your automations with your team and non-technical colleagues
• Store and retrieve data, credentials, and variables
• Use source control solutions to maintain and test code changes
• Provide front-end UI solutions for PowerShell automations

Practical Automation in PowerShell reveals how you can use PowerShell to build automation solutions for a huge number of common admin and DevOps tasks. Author Matthew Dowst uses his decades of experience to lay out a real blueprint for setting up an enterprise scripting environment with PowerShell. The book goes beyond the basics to show you how to handle the unforeseen complexities that can keep automations from becoming reusable and resilient. From the console to the cloud, you'll learn how to manage your code, avoid common pitfalls, and create sharable automations that are adaptable to different use cases.

The DSC Book teaches you everything you need to know to implement DSC today! You’ll learn DSC’s basic architecture, how to write configurations, and how to author your own DSC resources.

Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. It's Tuesday morning and on his drive into the office, Bill gets a call from the CEO.

The company's new IT initiative, code named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the project is massively over budget and very late. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and fix the mess in ninety days or else Bill's entire department will be outsourced.

With the help of a prospective board member and his mysterious philosophy of The Three Ways, Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined. With the clock ticking, Bill must organize work flow, streamline interdepartmental communications, and effectively serve the other business functions at Parts Unlimited.

In a fast-paced and entertaining style, three luminaries of the DevOps movement deliver a story that anyone who works in IT will recognize. Readers will not only learn how to improve their own IT organizations, they'll never view IT the same way again.