Oracle Linux

Previously I discussed deploying Enterprise Linux in AWS which I demonstrated by using the AWS console. This is a common way to deploy servers to the cloud, however doing server deployments manually can create a situation where you’re stuck with static images that are difficult to replicate when your infrastructure grows. One of the benefits of Cloud Computing is that the infrastructure is programmable, meaning we can write code that can automate tasks for us. [Read More]

In this post we’ll configure Network Time Protocol services in our local network. NTP provides time synchronisation which is important for authentication services and single-signon which we’ll set up in a later post. This post assumes you’ve already got an Enterprise Linux server setup. I’ll be using AlmaLinux that I installed in this post, although any RHEL variant should be similar. You’ll also need a second client machine that can communicate remotely with the NTP server. [Read More]

Previously I wrote about using Ansible to manage the configuration of Linux servers. I love using Ansible and use it almost every day, however in a large Enterprise environment with multiple users and a lot of Ansible roles and playbooks, sometimes using Ansible on its own becomes difficult to maintain. In this post I’m going to run through configuring Oracle Linux Automation Manager. Oracle’s Automation Manager is essentially a rebranded fork of Ansible Tower and provides a web user interface to easily manage your Ansible deployments and inventory. [Read More]

Ansible is an open source, configuration management and automation tool sponsored by Red Hat. Ansible lets you define the state that your servers should be in using YAML and then proceeds to create that state over SSH. For example, the state might be that the Apache web server should be present and enabled. The great thing about Ansible is if the server is already in the state that you’ve defined then nothing happens. [Read More]

In this post I’ll outline the steps to join an Enterprise Linux host to Microsoft Active Directory for user account management. Why would you want to do this? In an Enterprise environment it’s common to have a mix of Windows and Unix/Linux machines that offer different services across the organisation. To resolve the issues of user account management across a network of systems you’ll typically find a centralised directory service such as Microsoft Active Directory. [Read More]

In this post I’m going to demonstrate the installation of Enterprise Linux in VMware Workstation Player. I’ll be installing the AlmaLinux distribution because it’s a completely free, community maintained Enterprise distribution, though the steps outlined here should be the same for all variants of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including Oracle Linux, Rocky Linux and CentOS. First of all, download the AlmaLinux installation ISO from the official website. I’ll be installing version 8. [Read More]