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The ^BitterNetwork Administrator

All the books you need for work...and what to do with them

The Bitter Network Administrators Handbook
...a working users guide

The bitter Network Administrators Handbook is a guide to help those that are new to the business of being a Network Administrator. It's primary audience are those people that have paid a great deal of money to a certification boot camp or community college, or who has even graduated from a university and landed themselves a job and have no experience. If this person is you, I will help walk you, step by step, on what your immediate priorities should be, what software, tools and utilities you should have and what books you should consider for your library. Through the first year in the life of a network administrator you should at least learn two operating systems, a mail server program, two desktop operating systems and know at the minimum of 2000 acronyms. To achieve this you will have to read a lot of books, install and reinstall a lot of software and be able to successfully fake your way through enough conversations until you can actually know what you're talking about. Nothing can really prepare you for being a network administrator, but I will do my best to make it a little easier on you.

The Network Administrators Diaries
Chapter 3

Books:
You don't need a degree in physics to become a Network Administrator, but you will have to know how to read, not just read, but have the ability to read material that is brain numbingly boring. Computer books are typically 800 pages thick. The reason for this is because the author talks too goddamn much. Right there you were just tested to see if you have what it takes to be a network administrator. If by me using a curse word offended you then there's a more then real possibility that you will never make it in this computer field, because computers and end-users will turn the nicest of people in to a sailor with Tourette syndrome. If this were The HelpDesk Diaries, I would offer no apologies. There are two types of computer books, books that are short, to the point and are written to help you, and big fat wordy books that are put together to ornament your bookshelf. An inexperienced network administrator is only as good his or her support resources. Whether it's asking other computer people for help or having the right knowledge base to draw from such as the net or a healthy collection of computer books. There are so many computer books to choose from that often it's impossible to know which one is the right one to get, and at 40 to 60 dollars a throw the wrong books can be costly.

Tricks to choosing the right computer books:
Sites like Amazon have reviews beneath their books by those that have already purchased the book and their comments on it's effectiveness. Beware though, some reviews are obviously written by the author's publicist. No book is 100% great! So when reading these comments always listens for the hidden voice beneath. It has also been in my experience to never purchase a book that is published by the software vendor. Books by the software company seem to have as much company propaganda as facts about the program and leave out critical information to help overcome flaws in design, like security. When you are fanning through a book for something to help you fix your current disaster you need the facts and fast. The best computer books don't bore you with the history of the software, credit the ingenious creators and blind you with meaningless acronyms. The best computer books are short, to the point and show you exactly what you are looking for when you need to know in a hurry. Throughout this article I will recommend books and programs that I use to help me do my job.

Books that I recommend:

Backups:
Backups are the single most important things that you should know. If you want to keep your new job the very first thing you should do is locate your backups and make sure they are backing up. Because it never fails that when a new network administrator enters a company one of the servers crashes right away. And now you, Johnny Bluffed-Your-Way-Into-A-Job is on the spot to recover it fast. I know of a guy who left a note on his bosses desk apologizing and admitted that it was his brother that they gave the technical phone interview to. Take my advice from first hand experience; don't get caught short with no backups.

Backup tapes might ensure against lost data but it doesn't make for a timely recovery. If a hard drive crashes, you need to replace it with a new one, reinstall the operating system and restore from backup tape. That sounds pretty simple. But...most newbies don't keep a spare hard drive, can't find the software for the operating system and don't know how to reinstall the drivers for the backup drive. A one-hour recovery just turned into more than a day. Not only do I back up to tape, but I also do a nightly backup to another hard drive. It is faster to recover damaged or deleted files.
Fact: The accounting department will never run out of requests to restore spreadsheets.
Besides having a tape backup, a nightly backup of files onto another server, we also have a sector backup that is imaged on a SNAP server. We have backups of backups.

Software Recommendations:

Books that I recommend:

SQL Server Backup and Recovery: Tools and Techniques

E-mail:
You don't have to be an expert on e-mail. You just need to know your way around it, create and remove users and everything else you can look up. Linux is probably the most popular mail server is the world. Microsoft Exchange being second. If you were going to learn one I would do Linux because Exchange is easier to click your way around.

Books that I recommend that you have:

Sendmail Administration
Exchange Server 5.5 and Outlook Complete. (It is my opinion that there are more 5.5 servers than 2000.)

Security:
Security is as important to your network as backups. This is why I always recommend reading everything you should know about hacking. It is the only way you can protect your network. If you can't hack someone else's network you can't protect yours. Here is some on the software I use for security:

Protocol Analyzers: Of course Sniffer Pro is a good sniffer program but it has always been too expensive for me. Recently I found a program called Commview that I love. Very few computer people will spend their own money for software, but I did with Commview. It's the best sniffer program that I've ever used. It is also very affordable. I also have a wireless sniffer on my laptop. Sometimes I'll turn it on while driving home just to see how many of my neighbors have an open wireless network. It's my way.

Trace Route Programs: A tracing program is a must. I like to use a program called Visual Route. Like the name implies it gives you a graphical view of where your target is and shows you a visual path to your target.

Telnet: Finding a Telnet program that you are comfortable with is also important. The one I used is freeware that actually has a backdoor built in so the creator can hack your computer. (WARNING: be careful free software that is offered is not without a cost. Usually it is a backdoor to your computer. I won't tell you the one I use.

Penetration Testing: There is software that tries to penetrate a target server by using known vulnerabilities that primarily target NT and Windows 2000 servers. Because Microsoft doesn't inform its purchasers of known vulnerabilities and depends on them to find out for themselves, most network administrators don't have time to search Microsoft's maze of a website looking for this weeks security problems. I think this is partly due to if Microsoft informed its customers of security fixes they would also have to notify them of security problems with not fixes. The vulnerability and penetration tester I have can get into 9 out of 10 computers that I try. It's difficult to stop this type of program when it has programmed in it more vulnerabilities than the software company has fixes for.
I have a laptop that dual boots from Linux to Windows and it is stocked complete with little nasties like this. I use my laptop when I see people scanning my ports or trying to hack my server, let them know who their daddy is. Sometimes however, they show me.

Network Tools. Another set of utilizes that are important to know are, Netstat, Nbtstat, a Netbios scanner, a NSLookup, (a utility to look into someone DNS, and a NetAudit program. There are several out there like Essential Net Tools that are all in one programs.

Recommended Books on Security:

Recommended Software:

Viruses Patch and Reboot:
There is much talk in the workplace when it comes to viruses. Viruses are the reason why end-users forget to put paper in their printer and click print 50 more times, viruses are the reason for accidental deletion of documents and viruses are the reasons that many network administrators forget to check on backups. Both users and computer people blame viruses for almost every unexplained problem in a company. Viruses are a network administrators friend and foe: friend because you can blame almost any mistake on them and foe because they cause you a lot of unnecessary work and your company money. Today's viruses are very well structured and serve a specific function for their masters. Modern viruses don't care anything about making a name for themselves, all they want is to access your system and gather information. Information like; does your computer have a lot of documents, do you have an address book with e-mail addresses so it can infest itself onto other systems, or your computer may just be boring enough to use as a mule. Most viruses today are security issues and you have to always be aware of their possible presence. Make sure that WWW.CERT.ORG is in your favorites because this website will help keep you up on the latest virus.

Typically there are three or four people in a company that send and receive a lot of word documents and spreadsheet that always have a virus. Most viruses however, enter into your network through personal e-mail. I think that 90 percent of all the e-mail that comes into my company is from person e-mail. Cute pictures, jokes, or words of spiritual inspiration or a warning that there is a dangerous virus lose. I call these types of viruses missionary viruses because they are spread by people thinking they are doing good, like the missionaries of the past that would travel to far away lands to spread the word goodness and ended up wiping out entire civilizations with disease and plague. I monitor e-mail at my company so I can pick out a virus immediately. There are virus protection programs for your mail server that are very good, but not as fun as scanning mail yourself the old fashion way. Not to mention that these programs can cost ten of thousands of dollars.
Anti-Virus Software:

End-users:
I can't end this chapter without first saying a word about computer end-users. A good network administrator takes the time to learn about people as well as computers. The more you learn about the physiology of a computer user the easier your network will run. Below are a few helpful books that I recommend you read.
Recommend Books: