syslog

It's December, which means we can take a look back at the year and see how far we've come. Sys Admin has again weathered some stormy industry lows and fierce economic challenges. Again, we've watched sister magazines fold and witnessed colleagues laid off. The fact that it's December, however, also means we can put this difficult year behind us and look toward the year ahead.

When budgeting and brainstorming for the coming year, the question is asked whether we must plan to survive or plan to succeed. I vote for the latter. As the economy recovers, we should all be poised to take full advantage of it. Operating in survival mode and simply reacting to crises may be necessary sometimes, but it's also short sighted. One of the goals of this magazine is to take a longer view of systems administration and provide tools and information to help you succeed.

To that end, a couple of specific articles in this issue provide information on which to build. Cameron Laird begins a series on Python with an article called "Python in Systems Administration: Part I -- Better Scripting". In this article, Laird says he finds Python "so capable and easy to learn" that he tells newcomers it's the best single language to choose. Within the next several issues, Laird will support this view by providing an introduction to the Python language, discussing the "scripting mentality", and presenting many practical examples of how sys admins can put Python to use.

This issue's short, pull-out Solaris administration supplement features an article by Justin Buhler and Adrian Cockcroft that provides tips for doing capacity planning. The authors introduce key principles and tools (specifically the SE Toolkit and Orca) and show how to apply those principles and use the tools to obtain a visual representation of your servers and applications that will give you a better understanding of the capacity of your system.

Sys Admin is always looking for articles that can help you tweak your systems, sharpen your scripting skills, and build a plan to succeed. We're looking for articles on advanced administration topics, and the issue themes for the next few months include Security, Performance Tuning, Storage, and Networking. If you have tips for success in these or other areas, share that knowledge with your peers through an article in Sys Admin. Please send article proposals to Sys Admin's managing editor, Rikki Endsley at: rendsley@cmp.com. As always, you can send feedback and suggestions to me at: aankerholz@cmp.com.

Sincerely yours,

Amber Ankerholz
Editor in Chief