An introduction to the Unix operating system and scripting in the Perl and Unix shell languages. The course will cover basic user-level commands to the Unix operating system, followed by basic control structures, and data structures in Perl. Examples will include GUI programming, and interfacing to an underlying operating system. Following Perl, students will be introduced to the basics of shell programming using the Unix bash shell. Students will need one year of programming in an object-oriented language.

This course is designed to give students an understanding of the role of the system administrator in large organizations. This will be accomplished through a discussion of many of the tasks and tools of system administration. Students will participate in both a lecture section and a separate lab section. The technologies discussed in this class include: operating systems, system security, and service deployment strategies.

This class will take the students through the evolution of virtualization. The class begins with virtual network topologies such as VLANs, trunks and virtual routing and forwarding. The class will examine the various desktop virtualization platforms (Type 1) such as VirtualBox and VMWare workstation. Midway through the class students will transition into bare metal hypervisors (Type 2) and server virtualization. Elements of software defined networking, storage (ex. iSCSI) and cloud computing will also be discussed.

This course will investigate the protocols used to support network based services and the tasks involved in configuring and administering those services in virtualized Linux and Windows internet working environments. Topics include an overview of the TCP/IP protocol suite, in-depth discussions of the transport layer protocols, TCP and UDP, administration of network based services including the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Domain Name Service (DNS), Secure Shell (SSH), and Voice Over IP (VoIP). Students completing this course will have thorough theoretical knowledge of the Internet Protocol (IP), the Transport Control Protocol (TCP), and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), as well as experience in administering, monitoring, securing and troubleshooting an internet work of computer systems running these protocols and services.

This course will explore the skills required of a systems administrator in a large enterprise organization. Students will gain experience in managing an integrated Linux and Windows environment, using identity management, monitoring, and centralized logging systems. Other areas of examination will include a deeper understanding of many protocols including DNS, DHCP, SNMP, LDAP, IMAP, and SMTP. Containerization and virtualization concepts will also be explored. The student will also study security topics including Transport Layer Security, Pluggable Authentication Modules, SELinux, Kerberos, and Group Policy Objects. This course is a writing-intensive course that will require students to write a formal research paper.