Leopard 401: Mac OS X Advanced System Administration v10.5

Certified Apple OS X Leopard Server Authorized Training at FMCLearn More About Apple IT Certification

Course Descriptions
This five-day course builds on the foundations established in the Support Essentials v10.5 and Server Essentials v10.5 courses and is designed to empower students to meet the challenges faced by administrators deploying Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server in today's complex and dynamic data centers. Extensive use of the command line interface reveals a deeper scope of the course's subject material. Students learn how to become more efficient by taking advantage of the wide variety of automation technologies built into Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server. They also gain valuable problem-solving experience by using proven and effective troubleshooting methodologies.

The course approaches system administration from a task-based perspective, focusing on practical examples in a relevant context to reinforce the learning process. These tasks are organized into several key knowledge domains: implementation, networking, administration, and optimization. Implementation tasks focus on those aspects of installing, upgrading, configuring, and migrating existing legacy systems to more recent versions and configurations. Networking tasks concentrate on establishing solid foundations for network services. Students gain the experience with monitoring tools and automation technologies necessary to effectively administer larger deployments on a daily basis. Vital administration tasks that address those aspects of preserving the integrity of critical data help build students' confidence in their administration skills. The course concludes with an exploration of tools and techniques relating to such performance-based tasks as optimizing services and establishing high availability for services, data, and components.

Who should attend?
This course is designed for system administrators or anyone responsible for day-to-day administration of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server within a complex and often heterogeneous environment. Attend this course if you are responsible for tasks ranging from planning, configuration, networking and implementation, to monitoring and optimizing Apple technologies in a complex environment to meet the business needs of the organization or school, and the users of these resources.

Prerequisites

Students should have the following prerequisite knowledge prior to attending this course:

• Basic command line experience with the Bash shell environment
• Basic troubleshooting experience or Mac OS X Support Essentials v10.5
• Basic Mac OS X Server experience or Mac OS X Server Essentials v10.5
• Basic networking experience

*Due to the course structure and curriculum design, this course requires a minimum attendance of two students.


COURSE OUTLINE

Topic 1 - Planning
Pre-Purchase Planning, Documentation

Topic 2 - Installation & Configuration
Installation & Configuration, Configuration Files & Tools, Managed Preferences, Troubleshooting Methodology

Topic 3 - Updating & Migrating
Updating System Software, Upgrading, Migrating

Topic 4 - Assessment & Documentation
System Utilization, Statistics, Information Gathering, Additional Tools for Reporting, User Workflows

Topic 5 - DNS & NTP
Primary & Secondary DNS, Other DNS Configurations, Network Time Protocol (NTP)

Topic 6 - Controlling Access To Resources
Firewall, RADIUS

Topic 7 - Securing Access to Resources
Controlling the User, Cryptography

Topic 8 - System Monitoring
Tools & Utilities, Logs & the Logging System, Notifications, Planning & Policy

Topic 9 - Scripting & Automation
Shells & Automation, Automation Examples, Scheduling, launchd(8) & launchctl(1)

Topic 10 - Data Integrity
Strategies, Tools, Data, & Configurations

Topic 11 - Ensuring Reliability
Aspects of High Availability, Disks & RAID