Experienced Administrator ?? 2

[poolboy]

Hello !
I am a Certified WebSphere Specialist with development/technical experience but little or no Unix experience. I need advice on what would be a day to day task of a WebSphere administrator....including moving to production & stuff..
would I need to be proefficient with shell scripts etc ?
can I get away without not being an expert on unix ??
Thanks
poolboy

 

[rwb1959]

If you are going to be a WebSphere administrator in a UNIX
environment, I would strongly recommend you learn UNIX user
commands and UNIX scripting. You can do most WebSphere
admin tasks via the X-Windows user interface but there are
many tasks that require the ability to execute and understand
the output of, UNIX commands that will enable you to monitor
execution, modifiy configurations and troubleshoot problems.
You don't have to be an "expert" but you do need a good grasp
of UNIX commands and scripting. I wouldn't hire or place anyone in
that position that didn't

 

[poolboy]

rwb1959,
thanks a million ! now I know what to concentrate on..
but one more thing..you mentioned scripting, did you mean shell scripting or what ?

If I spend 2/3 weeks learning unix, should I be okay ??...
I already know basic commands and a just a little bit of shell scripts

many thanks

 

[rwb1959]

Yes, I was referring to shell scripting. Shell scripting becomes
very powerful when you have a good grasp of UNIX commands.
You can use these in your shell scripts to automate and create
powerful and useful monitoring, reporting, recovery and
maintenance tools. In the first 2/3 weeks, you can learn a lot
of the basics. I would recommend you also learn the basics of "vi"
in these first 2 weeks. Commands like ls, cat, grep, cut, and ps as well
as some powerful utilities like sed and awk are things you want to
have a good grasp of. Shell scripting gives you the power of
combining and manipulating the I/O of these commands and utilities.
Again, I'm not saying you have to be an "expert"... just a good grasp.
There are literally dozens of useful and powerful commands. I have only
mentioned "but the tip of the iceberg" but you need to start somwhere.
You'll get better with practice :

 

[rycamor]

You also should learn the basics about a few other things, for example:

1. /etc (general system configuration files)-- what is in there, and what can you do with it?

2. networking -- what do you do if an ethernet card fails and you have to put a new one in, and configure it? How can you monitor the system's network performance, etc...

3. Log files -- where they are, how to check them out for problems, possible security violations, etc... This includes kernel log files, user logins, webserver logfiles, etc...

4. Disk space and partitions-- How do you make sure you aren't running out of space, and how do you reconfigure and add partitions for optimal system performance and availability?

5. How to use cron, which is just another aspect of shell scripting, but allows you to specify repeated system tasks.

6. At least the basics on DNS/BIND, and how to set up DNS records for new domains, etc...

A good place to get Unix info, tips, tutorials, etc... is

http://www.ugu.com

(Unix guru Universe). For Linux tutorials, go to

http://linux.com/,

for FreeBSD tutorials, go to

http://www.freebsd.org/

and

http://www.freebsddiary.org

This is all just the beginning of a good Unix education. -------------------------------------------

"Calculus is just the meaningless manipulation of higher symbols"
                          -unknown F student

 

[poolboy]

Hi rycamor,
I quite appreciate all of your time and effort, but I'm a bit confused......I don't intend to become a Unix Administrator....please correct me if I'm wrong, but all the things U mentioned above seems more of a Unix Administrator role....
I would be a WebSphere(Application server) Administrator and I would assume that it is normal that a Unix Administrator would be employed..am I right ?

thanks
poolboy

 

[poolboy]

rwb1959,
thanks for your valuable information..
but I'm confused as I'm not intending to be a Unix Admin but a WebSphere Admin handling configuration, scalability, performance, workload-managment and deployment of enterprise application

U still reckon all that U mentioned above still stands ?
thanks
poolboy

 

[MaheshRathi]

Hi,
Yeah, as you said, you don't want to be an admin for unix .. but, still when you want be an admin for websphere, it's good if you know where are the log files, where are the configuration files etc. Also, if you want to change some configuration for scalability, performance reason, you should know what and where to make the change. Alos, if you want to automate some standard configuration, which otherwise take much time, you should be able to do so using script. So, i advise you to learn useful commands and shell scripting. Also, try to get some brief idea about the overall filesystem. Also, learn how to handle log files and how to analyse the faults through log files.

regards,
Mahesh

 

[MaheshRathi]

Hi,
Yeah, as you said, you don't want to be an admin for unix .. but, still when you want be an admin for websphere, it's good if you know where are the log files, where are the configuration files etc. Also, if you want to change some configuration for scalability, performance reason, you should know what and where to make the change. Also, if you want to automate some standard configuration, which otherwise takes much time, you should be able to do so using scripts. So, i advise you to learn useful commands and shell scripting. Also, try to get some brief idea about the overall filesystem structure. Also, learn how to handle log files and how to analyse the faults through log files.

regards,
Mahesh

 

[poolboy]

Thanks Mahesh,
but you see, all that I mentioned about configuration, scalability, performance etc..can be accomplished through the application server( WebSphere)..that is, U can make copies of one application reside on one or more machines while making them listen on different ports to improve scalability and workload performance etc....
WebSphere has it's own log files, configuration files and U can make changes...
am I confusing the application configuration, performance etc..with the operating system(Unix) configuration, performance etc


so as per the Unix side does your explanation still stands ??
Thanks so much
poolboy

 

[rwb1959]

Hi poolboy,

The commands I mentioned, vi, ps, cat, ls, grep, cut, etc.
are very basic commands in any flavor of UNIX. These commands
will allow you to monitor, change configurations and troubleshoot
various aspects of WebSphere running on UNIX (and other processes
and services as well). Remember that WebShpere is really just starts out as an
IBM HTTPD (Apache) module. Then there are several other components involved
including a database. Problems that may appear to be related to WebShpere
may in fact be caused by other services that WebSphere uses.
Yes it is true that the WebSphere console (via X-Windows) provides access
to most any WebSphere operations, but if the Admin Server crashed or failed
to start, what would you do if you didn't have a good grasp of some useful
UNIX commands (as described)? Learning to write shell scripts allows you to
create some of your own "batch" commands allowing you to automate the
process of troubleshooting and monitoring logs. For instance, you can write
a job script to scan the logs for specific words like "Error" and then generate
and email to be sent to you. This can be setup using "cron" to call your
script on a periodic bases.

I don't think you will need to know anything about disk partitioning or DNS and
networking to "just be a WebSphere admin" but certainly, knowing where to
look to discover a networking problem can certainly help when troubleshooting
a "WebSphere" problem because it cannot reach the database which is on
another system because the network guys made some changes last night.

I hope you see what I mean.

 

[poolboy]

rwb1959,
thanks ever so much, you have been really wonderful !!

regards
poolboy

 

[poolboy]

rwb1959,
thanks ever so much, you have been really wonderful !!

regards
poolboy