Awesome Sysadmin

A curated list of amazingly awesome open source sysadmin resources inspired by Awesome PHP

• Awesome Sysadmin
  • Backups
  • Cloning
  • Cloud Computing
  • Cloud Storage
  • Configuration Management Database
  • Configuration Management
  • Continuous Integration
  • Distributed Filesystems
  • DNS
  • Hosting Control Panels
  • IMAP/POP3
  • IT Asset Management
  • LDAP
  • Monitoring
  • Metric & Metric Collection
  • Log management
  • Network Configuration Management
  • Newsletter
  • NoSQL
  • RDBMS
  • SMTP
  • Software Containers
  • SSH
  • Statistics
  • Ticketing systems
  • Troubleshooting
  • Project Management
  • Version control
  • Virtualization
  • VPN
  • Web
  • Webmails
  • Wikis
• Resources
  • Books
  • Editors
  • Websites
• Contributing

Backups

Backup software.

• Amanda - Client-server model backup tool.
• Bacula - Another Client-server model backup tool.
• Backuppc - Client-server model backup tool with file pooling scheme.
• Burp - Network backup and restore program.
• Rsnapshot - Filesystem Snapshotting Utility.
• SafeKeep - Centralized pull-based backup using rdiff-backup.
• TarSnap - Secure backup service with an open-source client.
• UrBackup - Another client-server backup system.

Cloning

Cloning software.

• Clonezilla - Partition and disk imaging/cloning program.
• Fog - Another computer cloning solution.
• Redo Backup - Easy Backup, Recovery and Restore.

Cloud Computing

• CloudStack - Cloud computing software for creating, managing, and deploying infrastructure cloud services.
• Eucalpytus - Open source private cloud software with AWS compatibility.
• OpenNebula - An user-driven cloud management platform for sysadmins and devops.
• OpenStack - Open source software for building private and public clouds.

Cloud Storage

• git-annex assistant - A synchronised folder on each of your OSX and Linux computers, Android devices, removable drives, NAS appliances, and cloud services.
• ownCloud - Provides universal access to your files via the web, your computer or your mobile devices.
• Seafile - Another Open Source Cloud Storage solution.
• TahoeLAFS - Secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant, peer-to-peer distributed data store and distributed file system.
• SparkleShare System for distributing data to many locations; several reports of buggy encryption and git replication problems.
• Syncthing Open Source system for private, encrypted and authenticated distrobution of data

Configuration Management Database

Configuration management database (CMDB) software.

• i-doit - Open Source IT Documentation and CMDB.
• iTop - A complete open source, ITIL, web based service management tool.

Configuration Management

Configuration management tools.

• Ansible - It's written in Python and manages the nodes over SSH.
• CFEngine - Lightweight agent system. Configuration state is specified via a declarative language.
• Chef - It's written in Ruby and Erlang and uses a pure-Ruby DSL.
• Puppet - It's written in Ruby and uses Puppet's declarative language or a Ruby DSL.
• Salt - It's written in Python.
• Slaughter - It's written in Perl.

Continuous Integration

Continuous integration software.

• GitLab CI - Based off of ruby. They also provide GitLab, which manages git repositories.
• Go - Open source agile build and release management software.
• Jenkins - An extendable open source continuous integration server.

Distributed Filesystems

Network distributed filesystems.

• Ceph - Distributed object store and file system.
• DRBD - Disributed Replicated Block Device.
• GlusterFS - Scale-out network-attached storage file system.
• HDFS - Distributed, scalable, and portable file-system written in Java for the Hadoop framework.
• Lustre - A type of parallel distributed file system, generally used for large-scale cluster computing.
• MooseFS - Fault tolerant, network distributed file system.
• XtreemFS - XtreemFS is a fault-tolerant distributed file system for all storage needs.

DNS

DNS servers.

• Bind - The most widely used name server software.
• djbdns - A collection of DNS applications, including tinydns.
• Knot - High performance authoritative-only DNS server.
• NSD - Authoritative only, high performance, simple name server.
• PowerDNS - DNS server with a variety of data storage back-ends and load balancing features.
• Unbound - Validating, recursive, and caching DNS resolver.
• Yadifa - Lightweight authoritative Name Server with DNSSEC capabilities powering the .eu top-level domain.

Hosting Control Panels

Web hosting control panels

• Feathur - VPS Provisioning and Management Software.
• ISPConfig - Hosting control panel for Linux.
• VestaCP - Hosting panel for Linux but with Nginx.
• Virtualmin - Control panel for Linux based on webmin.

IMAP/POP3

IMAP/POP3 mail servers.

• Courier IMAP/POP3 - Fast, scalable, enterprise IMAP and POP3 server.
• Cyrus IMAP/POP3 - Intended to be run on sealed servers, where normal users are not permitted to log in.
• Dovecot - IMAP and POP3 server written primarily with security in mind.
• Qpopper - One of the oldest and most popular server implementations of POP3.

IT Asset Management

IT Assets Management software.

• GLPI - Information Resource-Manager with an additional Administration Interface.
• OCS Inventory NG - Enables users to inventory their IT assets.

LDAP

LDAP servers.

• 389 Directory Server - Developed by Red Hat.
• Apache Directory Server - Apache Software Foundation project written in Java.
• Fusion Directory - Improve the Management of the services and the company directory based on OpenLDAP.
• OpenDJ - Fork of OpenDS.
• OpenDS - Another directory server written in Java.
• OpenLDAP - Developed by the OpenLDAP Project.

Monitoring

Monitoring software.

• Cacti - Web-based network monitoring and graphing tool.
• check_mk - Collection of extensions for Nagios.
• Icinga - Fork of Nagios.
• LibreNMS - fork of Observium.
• Monit - Small Open Source utility for managing and monitoring Unix systems.
• Munin - Networked resource monitoring tool.
• Naemon - Network monitoring tool based on the Nagios 4 core with performance enhancements and new features.
• Nagios - Computer system, network and infrastructure monitoring software application.
• Observium - SNMP monitoring for servers and networking devices. Runs on linux.
• Opsview - Based on Nagios 4, Opsview Core is ideal for small IT and test environments.
• Riemann - Flexible and fast events processor allowing complex events/metrics analysis.
• Sensu - Open source monitoring framework.
• Shinken - Another monitoring framework.
• Thruk - Multibackend monitoring webinterface with support for Naemon, Nagios, Icinga and Shinken.
• Xymon - Network monitoring inspired by Big Brother.
• Zabbix - Eenterprise-class software for monitoring of networks and applications
• Zenoss - Application, server, and network management platform based on Zope.

Metric & Metric Collection

Metric gathering and display software.

• Collectd - System statistic collection daemon.
• Collectl - High precision system performance metrics collecting tool.
• Diamond - Python based statistic collection daemon.
• Graphite - Open source scaleable graphing server.
• InfluxDB - Open source distributed time series database with no external dependencies.
• RRDtool - Open source industry standard, high performance data logging and graphing system for time series data.
• Statsd - Application statistic listener.
• Grafana - A Graphite & InfluxDB Dashboard and Graph Editor.
• Dashing Ruby gem that allows for rapid statistical dashboard development. An all HTML5 approach allows for big screen displays in data centers or conference rooms.

Log management

Log management tools : collect, parse, visualize ...

• Logstash - Logstash is a tool for managing events and logs.
• Kibana - Visualize logs and time-stamped data.
• Fluentd Open source, plugabble data (logfile) aggregation engine written in C and Ruby. Pretty much same function as Logstash, compatible with Elasticsearch/Kibana.
• Graylog2 Open source logfile centralization system with it's own analysis engine (instead of Kibana) Graylog2 has commercial backing, and may end up with paid support options in the future.

Network Configuration Management

Network configuration management tools.

• RANCID - Monitors network device's configurarion and maintain history of changes.
• rConfig - Another network device configuration management tool.

Newsletters

Newsletter software.

• phpList - Newsletter manager.

NoSQL

NoSQL servers.

• Document Store
  • CouchDB - Ease of use, with multi-master replication document-oriented database system.
  • MongoDB - Another document-oriented database system.
  • RavenDB - Document based database with ACID/Transactional features
  • ElasticSearch - Java based database, popular with log aggregation, and email archiving projects
  • RethinkDB - Open source distributed document store database, focuses on JSON
• Column-Family
  • Cassandra - Distributed DBMS designed to handle large amounts of data across many servers.
  • Apache hBase - Hadoop database, a distributed, big data store
• Graph
  • neo4j - Open source graph database
  • flockdb - Twitter's distributed, fault-tolerant graph database
• Key-Value
  • Redis - Networked, in-memory, key-value data store with optional durability.
  • Riak - Another fault-tolerant key-value NoSQL database.
  • LevelDB - Google's high performance key/value database

Comparison of NoSQL servers: http://kkovacs.eu/cassandra-vs-mongodb-vs-couchdb-vs-redis

RDBMS

Relational DBMS.

• Firebird - True universal open source database.
• MariaDB - Community-developed fork of the MySQL.
• MySQL - Most popular RDBMS server.
• Percona Server - Enhanced, drop-in MySQL replacement.
• PostgreSQL - Object-relational database management system (ORDBMS).
• SQLite - Library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL DBS.

SMTP

SMTP servers.

• Exim - Message transfer agent (MTA) developed at the University of Cambridge.
• OpenSMTPD - Secure SMTP server implementation from the OpenBSD project.
• Postfix - Fast, easy to administer, and secure Sendmail replacement.
• Qmail - Secure Sendmail replacement.
• Sendmail - Message transfer agent (MTA).
• MailCatcher - Ruby gem that deploys a simply SMTP MTA gateway that accepts all mail and displays in web interface. Useful for debugging or development.
• Maildrop - Open Source disposable email SMTP server (mailinator.com), also useful for development.

Software Containers

Operating system–level virtualization.

• Docker - Open platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run distributed applications.
• OpenVZ - Container-based virtualization for Linux.

SSH

SSH tools.

• Cluster SSH - Controls a number of xterm windows via a single graphical console.
• Mosh - The mobile shell.
• parallel-ssh - Provides parallel versions of OpenSSH and related tools.
• SSH Power Tool - Execute commands and upload files to many servers simultaneously without using pre-shared keys.

Statistics

Analytics software.

• Piwik - Free and open source web analytics application.

Ticketing systems

Web-based ticketing system.

• Bugzilla - General-purpose bugtracker and testing tool originally developed and used by the Mozilla project.
• Cerb - A group-based e-mail management project built with a commercial open source license.
• Flyspray - Web-based bug tracking system written in PHP.
• MantisBT - Another web-based bug tracking system.
• osTicket - Open source support ticket system.
• Request Tracker - Ticket-tracking system written in Perl.
• TheBugGenie - Open source ticket system with extremely complete users rights granularity.

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting Tools.

• Sysdig - Capture system state and activity from a running Linux instance, then save, filter and analyze.

Project Management

Web-based project management and bug tracking systems.

• ChiliProject - Fork of Redmine.
• GitLab - Clone of GitHub written in ruby.
• Redmine - Written in ruby on rails.
• The Bug Genie - Written in PHP.
• Trac - Written in python.

Version control

Software versioning and revision control.

• Git - Distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) with an emphasis on speed.
• Mercurial - Another distributed revision control.
• Subversion - Client-server revision control system.

Virtualization

Virtualization software.

• Ganeti - Cluster virtual server management software tool built on top of KVM and Xen.
• KVM - Linux kernel virtualization infrastructure.
• oVirt - Manages virtual machines, storage and virtual networks.
• VirtualBox - Virtualization product from Oracle Corporation.
• Xen - Virtual machine monitor for 32/64 bit Intel / AMD (IA 64) and PowerPC 970 architectures.

VPN

VPN software.

• OpenVPN - Uses a custom security protocol that utilizes SSL/TLS for key exchange.
• Pritunl - OpenVPN based solution. Easy to set up.
• SoftEther - Multi-protocol software VPN with advanced features
• sshuttle - Poor man's VPN.
• strongSwan - Complete IPsec implementation for Linux.
• tinc - Distributed p2p VPN.

Webmails

Webmail applications.

• RainLoop - Simple, modern & fast web-based IMAP client.
• Roundcube - Browser-based IMAP client with an application-like user interface.

Web

Web servers.

• Apache - Most popular web server.
• Cherokee - Lightweight, high-performance web server/reverse proxy.
• Lighttpd - Web server more optimized for speed-critical environments.
• Nginx - Reverse proxy, load balancer, HTTP cache, and web server.
• uWSGI - The uWSGI project aims at developing a full stack for building hosting services.

Web Performance

• HAProxy - Software based load Balancing, SSL offloading and performance optimization, compression, and general web routing
• Varnish - HTTP based web application accelerator focusing on optimizing caching and compression. While Open Source, Varnish has a commerical support option.

Wikis

Wiki software.

• DokuWiki - Simple to use and highly versatile wiki that doesn't require a database.
• ikiwiki - A wiki compiler.
• Mediawiki - Used to power Wikipedia.
• MoinMoin - An advanced, easy to use and extensible WikiEngine with a large community of users.
• TiddlyWiki - Complete interactive wiki in JavaScript.

Resources

Various resources, such as books, websites and articles, for improving your skills and knowledge.

Books

Sysadmin related books.

• The Linux Command Line - A book about the Linux command line by William Shotts.
• The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win - How DevOps techniques can fix the problems that happen in IT organizations.
• The Practice of System and Network Administration - The first and second editions describes the best practices of system and network administration, independent of specific platforms or technologies.
• The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps - Is a methodology designed to jumpstart implementation of controls and process improvement.
• UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook - Approaches system administration from a practical perspective.

Editors

Open source code editors.

• Atom - A hackable text editor from Github.
• Brackets - Open source code editor for web designers and front-end developers.
• Eclipse - IDE written in Java with an extensible plug-in system.
• Geany - GTK2 text editor.
• Haroopad - Markdown editor with live preview.
• jotgit - Git-backed real-time collaborative code editing.

Websites

Useful sysadmin related websites.

• Ops School - Comprehensive program that will help you learn to be an operations engineer.
• Dotdeb - Repository with LAMP updated packages.
• [Rackspace Developers] - Slightly biased blog with lots of Devops Topics
• http://blog.devopsguys.com/ Devops consultants who blog about operations
• Digital Ocean Tutorials A surprisingly vast resource for getting the basics of certain applications, tools, or even systems administration topics. (Note: Digital Ocean pays authors for this content)
• Code As Craft Etsy's Ops blog, logs of technical posts.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.