Awesome Sysadmin

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

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

Backups

Backup software.

• Amanda - Client-server model backup tool.
• Bacula - Another Client-server model backup tool.
• Backupninja - Lightweight, extensible meta-backup system.
• Backuppc - Client-server model backup tool with file pooling scheme.
• Burp - Network backup and restore program.
• Duplicity - Encrypted bandwidth-efficient backup using the rsync algorithm.
• 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.
• DREBS - AWS EBS backup script that supports strategies.

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.
• Eucalyptus - 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.
• The Foreman - Foreman is a complete lifecycle management tool for physical and virtual servers. FOSS.
• Cobbler - Cobbler is a Linux installation server that allows for rapid setup of network installation environments.
• Mesos - Develop and run resource-efficient distributed systems.

Cloud Orchestration

• Cloudify - Open source TOSCA-based cloud orchestration software platform written in Python and YAML.
• Rundeck - Simple orchestration tool.
• Salt - It's written in Python.

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.
• SparkleShare - Provides cloud storage and file synchronization services. By default, it uses Git as a storage backend.
• Swift - A highly available, distributed, eventually consistent object/blob store.
• Syncthing - Open Source system for private, encrypted and authenticated distrobution of data.

Collaborative Software

Collaborative software or groupware suites.

• Citadel/UX - Collaboration suite (messaging and groupware) that is descended from the Citadel family of programs.
• EGroupware - Groupware software written in PHP.
• Kolab - Another groupware suite.
• SOGo - Collaborative software server with a focus on simplicity and scalability.
• Zimbra - Collaborative software suite, that includes an email server and web client.

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.
• Ralph - Asset management, DCIM and CMDB system for large Data Centers as well as smaller LAN networks.

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.
• Fabric - Python library and cli tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks.
• 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 Deployment

Continuous integration/deployment software.

• Buildbot - Python-based toolkit for continuous integration.
• 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.
• Vlad the Deployer - Deployment automation.

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.
• OpenAFS - Distributed network file system with read-only replicas and multi-OS support.
• TahoeLAFS - secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant, peer-to-peer distributed data store and 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

• Ajenti - Control panel for Linux and BSD.
• 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.
• ZPanel - Control panel for Linux, BSD, and Windows.

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.
• Ralph - Asset management, DCIM and CMDB system for large Data Centers as well as smaller LAN networks.
• Snipe IT - Asset & license management software.

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.

Log Management

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

• Elasticsearch - A Lucene Based Document store mainly used for log indexing, storage and analysis.
• Fluentd - Log Collector and Shipper
• Graylog2 - Pluggable Log and Event Analysis Server with Alerting options.
• Kibana - Visualize logs and time-stamped data.
• Logstash - Tool for managing events and logs.
• [Heka] (https://github.com/mozilla-services/heka) - Data collection and processing made easy

Monitoring

Monitoring software.

• Cacti - Web-based network monitoring and graphing tool.
• Cabot - Monitoring and alerts, similar to PagerDuty.
• 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.
• OMD - The Open Monitoring Distribution.
• 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 - Enterprise-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.
• 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.
• Diamond - Python based statistic collection daemon.
• Grafana - A Graphite & InfluxDB Dashboard and Graph Editor.
• Ganglia - High performance, scalable RRD based monitoring for grids and/or clusters of servers. Compatible with Graphite using a single collection process.
• Graphite - Open source scaleable graphing server.
• InfluxDB - Open source distributed time series database with no external dependencies.
• OpenTSDB - Store and server massive amounts of time series data without losing granularity.
• RRDtool - Open source industry standard, high performance data logging and graphing system for time series data.
• Statsd - Application statistic listener.

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.

• DadaMail - Mailing List Manager, written in Perl.
• phpList - Newsletter manager written in PHP.

NoSQL

NoSQL databases.

• Column-Family
  • Apache HBase - Hadoop database, a distributed, big data store.
  • Cassandra - Distributed DBMS designed to handle large amounts of data across many servers.
• Document Store
  • CouchDB - Ease of use, with multi-master replication document-oriented database system.
  • ElasticSearch - Java based database, popular with log aggregation, and email archiving projects.
  • MongoDB - Another document-oriented database system.
  • RavenDB - Document based database with ACID/Transactional features.
  • RethinkDB - Open source distributed document store database, focuses on JSON.
• Graph
  • FlockDB - Twitter's distributed, fault-tolerant graph database.
  • Neo4j - Open source graph database.
• Key-Value
  • LevelDB - Google's high performance key/value database.
  • Redis - Networked, in-memory, key-value data store with optional durability.
  • Riak - Another fault-tolerant key-value NoSQL database.

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

Packaging

• fpm - Versatile multi format package creator.
• omnibus-ruby - Full stack, cross distro packaging software (Ruby).
• packman - Full stack, cross distro packaging software (Python).

Queuing

• BeanstalkD - A simple, fast work queue.
• RabbitMQ - Robust, fully featured, cross distro queuing system.
• ZeroMQ - Lightweight queuing system.

RDBMS

Relational DBMS.

• Firebird - True universal open source database.
• Galera - Galera Cluster for MySQL is an easy-to-use high-availability solution with high system up-time, no data loss, and scalability for future growth.
• 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).
• PostgreSQL-XL - Scalable Open Source PostgreSQL-based database cluster.
• 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.
• Haraka - A high-performance, pluginable SMTP server written in JavaScript.
• 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, also useful for development.
• 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).

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.

• autossh - Automatically respawn ssh session after network interruption.
• 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.

• Analog - The most popular logfile analyser in the world.
• Piwik - Free and open source web analytics application.
• Webalizer - Fast, free web server log file analysis program.

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.
• Otrs - A free and open-source trouble ticket system software package that a company, organization, or other entity can use to assign tickets to incoming queries and track further communications about them.
• 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.
• Gogs - Written in Go.
• Redmine - Written in ruby on rails.
• The Bug Genie - Written in PHP.
• Trac - Written in python.

Version control

Software versioning and revision control.

• Fossil - Distributed version control with built-in wiki and bug tracking.
• Git - Distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) with an emphasis on speed.
• GNU Bazaar - Distributed revision control system sponsored by Canonical.
• 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.
• Packer - A tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration.
• Vagrant - Tool for building complete development environments.
• 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.

XMPP

XMPP servers.

• ejabberd - XMPP instant messaging server written in Erlang/OTP.
• Metronome IM - Fork of Prosody IM.
• MongooseIM - Fork of ejabberd.
• Openfire - Real time collaboration (RTC) server.
• Prosody IM - XMPP server written in Lua.
• Tigase - XMPP server implementation in Java.

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.

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.

Blogs

• Code as Craft - Etsy's Ops blog, lots of technical posts.
• DevOpsGuys - Devops consultants who blog about operations.
• Rackspace Developers - Slightly biased blog with lots of Devops Topics.

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.
• GNU Emacs - An extensible, customizable text editor-and more.
• Haroopad - Markdown editor with live preview.
• jotgit - Git-backed real-time collaborative code editing.
• Lime - Aims to provide an open source solution to Sublime Text
• Vim - A highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient editing.

Repositories

Software package repositories.

• Dotdeb - Repository with LAMP updated packages for Debian.
• Remi - Repository with LAMP updated packages for RHEL/Centos/Fedora.

Websites

Useful sysadmin related websites.

• Ops School - Comprehensive program that will help you learn to be an operations engineer.
• 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)

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.