Articles by Charlie Schluting 

Will Solaris continue to evolve and provide new and useful tools? Or will it stagnate and become a niche OS like other corporate Unix variants?

With so many notions about what cloud computing even is, it's hard to cut through the hype. Charlie Schluting defines some terms and considers the arguments.

Considering a last-minute run to Interop Las Vegas? Our quick guide to the conference tells you where to drop in and where to dip out.

Going virtual isn't going to make your life easier overnight; but even if it does introduce its own challenges, the benefits outweigh the outweigh the learning curve and shift in admin focus.

Remember the old school sysadmins who knew where everything was and how it worked? Where are they now? And why, with the proliferation of teams, is it harder than ever to get IT personnel to work together?

With a distinguished pedigree and an open source foundation, RiverMuse is looking to bring your legacy NMS into the 21st century with advanced reporting and sophisticated alerts.

Keeping good logs on a Unix or Linux system can be a challenge, but with a little work up front you can make sure error messages make it to the people who need to see them and get vital troubleshooting information into a permanent log.

It's not always the best tool for the job, but if you need to get a backup into the cloud quickly and easily, rsync might do the trick. Charlie Schluting steps you through how to build a script to do just that.

Moving from self-hosted to cloud-hosted e-mail services makes a lot of people nervous, but with a little planning and good communication with your user base, there's no reason it has to be hard.

Opinion: Like it or not, admins in Microsoft shops have some things a lot easier than their Unix and Linux counterparts. Maybe it's time for us to borrow a page from Redmond's book and start integrating a little more tightly.

Do you feel like you're spending more time fighting Linux than using it to provide reliable network services? There are some common sense steps you can take to restore harmony to your relationship with Tux.

The rugged switches and routers that drive networks on oil rigs, power stations and research operations in Antarctica don't always feature high-end enterprise capabilities. Sixnet is out to change that.

Ruckus Wireless' Zap lets network administrators gain real insight into how their WLANs will perform, and it's available under a liberal open source license.

When a full-blown commercial WAFS implementation is more than you need, consider open source alternatives using FreeBSD, Linux and a number of helpful tools.

With just one vendor to call and one bill to pay, Charlie Schluting argues that managing a WLAN with central controllers is the way to go, and explains how that works with Cisco gear.

Picking a "vendor neutral" WLAN management system will require careful research and awareness of some tradeoffs.

In the world of wireless network management you need to thread the needle between vendor lock-in and potentially poor coverage from third-party solutions.

Google has made waves with its new DNS service. Here's why you should be thinking about hosted DNS, too, and why OpenDNS should see Google's move as an opportunity.

NIC bonding with Linux is simple, once you understand all your choices and their limitations.

How well is Microsoft's latest operating system dealing with the Linux world's most popular server software? Charlie Schluting tells you what to expect as you bring Windows 7 clients into your Linux network.

Buzzwords, inflated job descriptions and over-complex tools cause administrators to shy away from project management, but that's the last thing they need to be doing.

You might be ready to move beyond OpenVPN, but feel daunted by IPSEC's learning curve. With our quick guide, you'll be up and running with free, open Openswan in no time.

For smaller setups and times when you don't need server-to-server tunnels, OpenVPN may do the trick. But where do you turn when you need cross-platform security without any performance compromises?

There are lots of businesses built around free and open source software. Why should you give them any money?

Scaling IT systems either breeds high levels of automation to make the infrastructure manageable, or it ends up breeding a huge mess. Here are five signs that you need to mend your ways.