Simulator for a system administrator or how to beat your former classmates in an interview

    Good day, Megamind reader!

    This article does not purport to be how-to, but may be a great starting point for future graduates. It is for those who understand that the knowledge from the university will not only surprise the employer, but you will not be able to arrange it.

    Here I tried to gather advice on creating a kind of "simulator" for future system administrators, which, unfortunately, I did not receive in due time.

    I ask all beginners in this field to the table under cat.
    I warn you : there are no configs and configuration manuals here.

    Immediately, I apologize for the wildly long name. I just really wanted to convey the meaning of the article so that it would not be missed by those to whom it would be useful.
    Now I’ll tell you why it so “thumped” into the article.

    Background


    The background for writing the article was several.

    One of them is a lot of annoying comments on sites with the meaning “everything is bad with us. they don’t take without experience, but nowhere to take experience. ” As rightly pointed out rainwall - this is not about IT.

    Next: the same "nagging" from less experienced colleagues. Here we are, they say, started, and we can’t develop further, because we don’t know how it works there. Have you tried? What did you do for hip hop to figure it out? Nothing! This answer offends everyone, but if it is not truth, it is very close to it.

    And if we start to understand this issue, then we will understand the root of evil: in order to begin to understand, you need to understand HOW it should work and WHY.

    Attention!Now there will be a cool idea. Focus.

    How should a novice system administrator understand what he needs to disassemble before his first job? To do this, he must understand how it works and what it can be useful for. But at the initial stage, we don’t know what is used in small companies where they are waiting for us. What to do? Read more.

    Here I will talk about the typical infrastructure of small companies (in my experience - up to 100 users).
    I ask you not to lose heart aspiring to large companies - they do not have many differences and the services described below are also present.

    In addition to the story “Well, they have it,” I’ll tell you how to feel it and try to set it up.

    Attention! No. 2 Why is there no “do it this way”, “configure it by adding it here”, etc.?

    Everything is simple. When preparing my graduation project, I set up billing for a spherical provider like this article . Everything worked out cool, everything worked, I understood HOW it works and was happy. But after a while I was visited by the thought: “How did I do this?” There is a result, but what about the methods? Due to the fact that I used copy + paste, I did not remember almost anything (except for those moments when it did not work out). Therefore, here I want to tell what is used and why. A customize? Configure then himself.

    So, let's begin.
    This is all just my opinion. The article is informational and does not oblige to anything. It just seems to me like that.

    How to feel?


    Fortunately for us, there is virtualization. Do not rush to leave with the words "Ah, it won’t work on my computer" and "For whom they only write this."

    For the so-called “demo stand”, a PC with a Pentium 4 or higher CPU, 4+ GB of RAM (you can use less if you really want to) and about 70 GB of hard disk space are enough.

    There is a bunch of software for this. Happy owners of Windows 8 Pro and higher (naturally with a processor that supports virtualization ) can use Hyper-V. For those who have not yet switched to Windows 8, I would advise VMware Workstation. You can also use the free VirtualBox and Microsoft Virtual PC.

    What do we get? Ability to create a small infrastructure with an isolated network.

    What to feel ??


    Before going over virtual machines, I would like to explain how to connect them to a network.



    As you can see, only the gateway will “look” at us. To do this, in the virtual machine settings, we need to configure network adapters in this way:

    Gateway - two network cards. One is looking at the network card of your PC, the second is the internal network.
    All the rest is an internal network.
    First we need a domain controller .

    It’s better to get information not from any forums and Wikipedia, but from Microsoft sites. This is a more reliable source.

    Why is it needed? For centralized user and computer management.
    When is it needed? Microsoft claims that it is advisable to use it on a network with 6 (or 8, I can’t find proofs) PCs. In fact, they try to leave working groups as soon as possible. Even when the PC is only 4, but they are going to expand over time.

    What do we need for this? OS Windows Server 2008 and higher. The following services are useful to us on it: Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, DFS. This, so to say, is a gentleman's set.

    For tests, you can allocate 1 GB of RAM and about 30 GB on the hard drive for the virtual machine with it.

    What will he do?
    Active Directory - store data about your users and computers. And not only.
    DNS - match device names to their IP addresses.
    DHCP - distribute IP addresses.
    DFS - file server. To save resources in small organizations, it is also located on a domain controller.

    Now the gateway .
    Why is it needed? Everything that can be done on it will be lower.

    What do we need for this? Usually they use * nix systems for it. Advise anything. Whoever likes it, so to speak. For beginners, I recommend SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. And it is stable and convenient. And at the new workplace, you can still meet anything you want.

    There are also ready-made solutions, such as PfSense, Vyatta, Zeroshell, m0n0wall, Zentyal, etc.
    For him, 512 MB of RAM and 10 GB on the hard drive are enough for us.

    You can also meet different wishes from the leadership, which will need to be implemented on it.

    The most common:
    “I want to prohibit sitting in contact” - use Squid (you can + SquidGuard)
    “I want to see who sits where” - SqStat, Sarg, SquidView, etc.
    “I want to go to a working computer from home” (TeamViewer is not safe) - OpenVPN and its analogues.
    “I want to upload files from anywhere” is not a question. Let's do ftp using pure-ftpd, vsftpd, proftpd, etc.
    “I want corporate mail in our organization” - zimbra, postfix, etc.

    And that's not all. Then all sorts of jabbers, internal portals and the like can go, it all depends on the creativity and imagination of the management and users.

    So, with the server side we are done.

    But we need to see how it all works. To do this, I advise you to deploy at least one (and preferably 2) virtual workstation.

    If only one has enough resources - install Windows 7 Pro. (Enough 1 GB of RAM and 20 GB on hdd)
    If you get 2 then the OS on them is Windows XP Pro (512 MB of RAM and 10 GB on hdd) and Windows 7 Pro (1 GB of RAM and 20 GB on hdd). Why exactly these? Because they are the most common in small organizations.

    What can be done with them?

    - Joining a domain.
    - To kill them partially access to sites.
    - Differentiate access to the file server for different users.
    - Practice using group policies (there are a lot of opportunities. Often: connecting a file resource as a network drive, installing programs, restricting rights to any tasks, such as managing a firewall).

    I think that's enough for the first time.

    After you implement all this, you will see how it works, you will encounter some mistakes, you will not be afraid to go to your first job in a small company. And the interview will be easier, because there is a feeling of confidence and already a little experience.

    PS I will be glad to additions and wishes.
    PPS If you have not read my previous article about the beginning of a career in IT - Beginner IT specialist or how not to start your career in IT

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