Day 4
This series of blog posts demonstrates many of the topics and issues that occur with On-Site Linux Training. The importance of the last day is not only that you cover the scheduled material but you put into place communication options for students after class, cover any questions that students may have often adjust the class content to any special needs that students may need. In this training session one of the requests by the class was to minimize security training and focus more on server performance issues as they had more responsibility related to that topic.
Content for the last day covered VNC as a method of connecting to the server both within the network and also connecting over the Internet. It is important to communicate the issue of security when using VNC as most client-server connections are not encrypted so you want to point out the clients that do provide encryption. Speed is also a important problem, especially on Internet connections. In class, the Lab always encourages students both to login with TWM which is a minimized option and also the full Desktop which is convenient but neither necessary and certainly slow.
SSH is the major focus for remote server administration as it is encrypted and fast. However, many administrators moving from a Windows background are looking for an graphical option like VNC despite the issues of speed and security. It is imperative that students can use SSH in both logging into a server, transferring files and using graphical tools like Filezilla to connect on port 22 so that if they have to move files from a Windows machine they are capable of transferring files.
The Performance issues evaluate 5 things that can be bottlenecks for Linux servers. Disk usage, I/O, CPU, memory and networking are all evaluated on how you might tune these options for better server performance.
Once the training is complete one of the things that we try to maintain is communication and continual training after the class. We always provide email and contact information if students have questions. But we also provide a unique service in that we provide students a login to our portal where we provide updated content in the manuals that are constantly updated, updated VMWare images for students to download and Flash videos with voice so students may watch class topics online to continue their training. This is critical for continual training as students cannot absorb all of the material when it is presented.
