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Rarely will you find such a diversity of topics as we offer this month. In the September issue, Bryan Smith examines virtual tape libraries in depth, Ryan Matteson describes some utilities for monitoring the health and performance of a PF firewall, Randal Schwartz shows how to match common things with Perl, Roger Feldman begins a brief series providing practical DBA knowledge for sys admins, and Peter Galvin looks through the now-open door of Solaris, just to name a few. This issue provides all that and Amy Rich's ever-popular Q&A column.

But wait there's more!

Besides the regular issue, we're including a bonus supplement focusing on console servers. Console servers (although they do not slice or dice) can simplify the task of managing crucial assets in a distributed environment. We have compiled a console server product guide, which provides an overview of the server products and vendors to help you understand this market, as well as contributed articles and vendor-sponsored technical information.

Along with the console server product guide, this supplement contains an article titled "The Value Proposition for using Console Servers" by Zonker Harris, who maintains Zonker's Greater Scroll of Console Knowledge at: http://www.conserver.com/consoles/. In this article, Harris examines the benefits of console server application deployment and details both the "hard" and "soft" costs of implementation. The supplement also includes "Conserver: A Flexible, Mature Console Management System" by Bryan Stansell, who maintains the Conserver project (see http://www.conserver.com/). Stansell explains the history of the project, describes what conserver can do, and shows how to configure and use it. These articles provide straightforward information for setting up your own console server system and helpful tips for making it a beneficial part of a distributed environment.

As always, Sys Admin's goal is to provide an array of articles solving problems you may encounter in your real, working world, and I hope you find the supplement content and feature articles useful in that regard. If you have suggestions for topics that you'd like to see covered in future supplements or ideas for contributed articles, please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely yours,

Amber Ankerholz
Editor in Chief