The BigAdmin Portal: Combining Tools and Community

With the widespread adoption and increasing use of the Internet, the life of the systems administrator has become increasingly complex. Technologies have proliferated into an array of products that, while not necessarily architected to work together, still require the high levels of availability, reliability, and support found in mission-critical environments. With the pace of change in technology continuing to quicken, two realities become apparent. The need for sys admins to learn about new products and technologies, increase their knowledge and expertise, and share information, is greater than ever. Also, organizations must be able increase their service levels, while at the same time lowering their service costs and reducing IT risks. With the BigAdmin[SM] portal, a site created and developed by a group of Sun engineers, Sun Microsystems addresses both of these needs.

The BigAdmin portal (http://www.sun.com/bigadmin) is a central Internet site that offers the features and community interaction needed to make systems administrators more effective. It provides an online center that includes Solaris[TM] Operating Environment-based discussion and newsgroups, documentation, FAQs, patches, freeware, software, services, and training. The site serves as a one-stop online resource for administrators to exchange opinions and advice with one another, developers, engineers from Sun, and others in the Solaris community. The concept is take a penny, leave a penny, with the intent that an administrator can easily find practical information to get the job done, or share knowledge to help prevent the next administrator from having to reinvent the wheel. The goal of the site is to help administrators balance the reactive needs of keeping systems up and running, with the proactive tasks of expanding a network's capabilities.<>