Welcome, and hello! My name is Dave, and I am a Systems Administrator in Pennsylvania, USA. I am starting this blog to discuss various sysadmin related topics, including network and systems security, systems configurations, tips for optimizing systems and networks, using open source tools in a corporate environment, and more.

I will be writing about my experiences and various things I know to be true in the IT environment, from a Systems Administrator’s perspective. You may not agree with some things that I write here, especially if you are in IT but are not a sysadmin…this doesn’t mean that I think you are wrong…it means simply that I am looking at the situation from a different perspective. I encourage your comments and will try to respond to them. Feel free to advance this into a forum where we can all learn something that will help us in the IT world, and in our jobs.

As with anyone in this field, I am constantly learning and seeking out new ways to do things, mostly for three reasons: will it provide better security and/or performance?, will it save the company money?, and is it the “Right Way” to do it? Undoubtedly, the answers to each of these questions are often tenuous and hard to justify empirically, but when appropriate, I will make the effort to analyze the largest pros and cons under each category and try to give information that will help you to decide which solution will work best for you.

I may not get the chance to update this blog every day…as I’m sure many of you experience, some days my job will take many more than eight hours of my time, while others, it will barely take two. For the same reason, I may update it more than once on some days. Take it all with a grain of salt, as each Sys Admin needs to take his or her own environment, experience, and politics into account for each solution, but I hope I can shed some light on the various options for those “running the show” in IT environments worldwide.

Thanks for visiting this blog, and know that I encourage your comments!