System Administration Course

Lesson 1 • Virtualisation and Lab Setup

Guides students through building a personal lab using hypervisors and virtual machines. A working lab environment is required for all practical exercises.

Lesson 2 • Command-Line Proficiency

Teaches essential shell commands on both Bash and PowerShell. Proficiency here accelerates every hands-on task in later chapters.

Lesson 3 • Linux Operating System Basics

Covers the Linux kernel, filesystem hierarchy, and boot process. Provides the OS foundation required for all subsequent Linux administration tasks.

Lesson 4 • The Sysadmin Role and Mindset

Defines daily responsibilities, on-call expectations, and professional ethics. Establishes the operational mindset needed throughout the course.

Lesson 1 • User Account Lifecycle

Covers creation, modification, and deletion of user accounts on both platforms. Establishes the full lifecycle workflow central to access management.

Lesson 2 • Linux File Permissions and ACLs

Teaches octal and symbolic permission notation, setuid/setgid, and POSIX ACLs. Directly controls resource access on Linux systems managed in later chapters.

Lesson 3 • Groups and Role-Based Access

Explains group types, nesting, and role-based access control principles. Reduces administrative overhead by assigning permissions to roles rather than individuals.

Lesson 4 • Password Policies and Authentication

Defines password complexity, aging, and multi-factor authentication options. Strengthens the authentication layer before network and service hardening topics.

Lesson 1 • Filesystem Creation and Tuning

Covers ext4, XFS, and NTFS formatting, mounting, and performance tuning. Proper filesystem selection and tuning directly impacts system reliability.

Lesson 2 • Logical Volume Management

Teaches LVM concepts including physical volumes, volume groups, and logical volumes. Enables flexible, non-disruptive storage resizing in Linux environments.

Lesson 3 • Network-Attached and Shared Storage

Introduces NFS, SMB/CIFS, and iSCSI for shared storage access. Connects local storage skills to networked storage used in multi-server environments.

Lesson 4 • Disk Partitioning Schemes

Compares MBR and GPT partitioning and guides partition creation with standard tools. Correct partitioning is the prerequisite for all filesystem and LVM work.

Lesson 1 • TCP/IP and Subnetting Essentials

Reviews IP addressing, subnetting, and routing fundamentals from a sysadmin perspective. Underpins every network configuration task in this and later chapters.

Lesson 2 • Host-Based Firewall Management

Configures iptables, nftables, and Windows Firewall rules for service protection. Directly reduces attack surface on every server managed by the administrator.

Lesson 3 • DNS Configuration and Management

Covers DNS record types, zone files, and resolver configuration. Correct DNS setup is required for service discovery in all multi-host environments.

Lesson 4 • Network Diagnostics and Troubleshooting

Applies systematic diagnostic methods using standard network tools. Builds the troubleshooting workflow used throughout the course's applied chapters.

Lesson 1 • Writing Custom Service Units

Guides creation of custom unit files with restart policies and resource limits. Enables students to deploy any application as a managed system service.

Lesson 2 • systemd Architecture and Units

Explains unit types, dependency ordering, and the systemd journal. Mastery of systemd is essential for managing every Linux service in later chapters.

Lesson 3 • Process Monitoring and Control

Teaches process inspection, priority adjustment, and signal handling on Linux and Windows. Enables rapid diagnosis and resolution of runaway or hung processes.

Lesson 4 • Windows Services and Task Scheduler

Covers Windows service configuration, recovery actions, and scheduled task creation. Provides Windows parity for the Linux service management skills already learned.

Lesson 1 • SELinux and AppArmor

Configures mandatory access control using SELinux policies and AppArmor profiles. Adds a kernel-enforced security layer beyond standard discretionary access controls.

Lesson 2 • Patch Management Workflows

Covers patch classification, testing pipelines, and rollback procedures for both platforms. Ensures systems remain current without introducing unplanned downtime.

Lesson 3 • Audit Logging and Compliance Reporting

Configures auditd and Windows event auditing to capture security-relevant events. Produces the evidence trail required for compliance and incident investigations.

Lesson 4 • Vulnerability Scanning and Remediation

Uses scanning tools to identify misconfigurations and known vulnerabilities, then remediates findings. Closes the loop between hardening baselines and ongoing risk management.

Lesson 1 • Backup Strategy and Policy Design

Defines RPO, RTO, and backup types to build a coherent data protection policy. Policy design precedes all technical backup implementation in this chapter.

Lesson 2 • Replication and Geographic Redundancy

Covers filesystem and database replication across sites for geographic redundancy. Prepares students to architect solutions that survive datacenter-level failures.

Lesson 3 • Backup Tools and Implementation

Implements backups using rsync, tar, and enterprise backup agents on both platforms. Translates policy decisions into working, tested backup jobs.

Lesson 4 • Disaster Recovery Planning and Testing

Builds runbooks for system recovery and conducts tabletop and live restore tests. Untested backups are not backups; this section enforces that discipline.

Lesson 1 • Capacity Planning and Performance Tuning

Uses historical metrics to forecast resource needs and tune system performance. Prevents reactive firefighting by anticipating growth and bottlenecks.

Lesson 2 • Infrastructure as Code Practices

Applies version control and code review practices to infrastructure definitions. Ensures configuration changes are auditable, reversible, and peer-reviewed.

Lesson 3 • System Monitoring and Alerting

Deploys metric collection, dashboards, and threshold-based alerts for CPU, memory, disk, and network. Provides the visibility needed to detect and respond to issues before users are impacted.

Lesson 4 • Log Management and Analysis

Centralizes logs with a log aggregation stack and builds queries for operational insight. Complements metric monitoring with event-level context for troubleshooting.