Overview of our Solaris Courses

First Alternative's bread and butter are our range of Solaris courses. For over 16 years we have been providing the Solaris community (both in the UK and Europe) with an alternative to the manufacturer's courses.

Our Solaris administration courses are once again available in Central London - see the Admin istration links below for dates.

We offer a broad range designed at getting the most out of Solaris, no matter whether your role be user, administrator or developer.

For those who complete our entire range from Introduction to Advanced administration, the path is clear to sit the Solaris certification exams with the independent Prometric organisation. All the skills you need are taught here, from basic system operation, through Solaris utilities, to shell programming and many advanced networking and admin topics.

Our Solaris courses are suitable training for Solaris Certification

Please select this link for a list of all our scheduled courses.

Introduction to Solaris

Our Introduction to Solaris course covers Solaris fundamentals, but in a practical and thorough way. You'll feel confident and eager to learn more, and will have all the skills necessary to handle day-to-day Solaris sessions. Many people comment that this is a "well-rounded" course, and sets them up perfectly to progress further. Logging in, file manipulation, directory skills, documentation, vi editor, file permissions, processes, shell command-line skills (IO control, history, aliases, etc. - even using quotes ! uggh!) Want more? Utilities overview, and CDE windows system are also covered, plus to finish off, a network services overview. A truly comprehensive course which provides the best possible springboard into your Solaris career.

Solaris Utilities and Shell Programming (formerly Solaris for Users/Administrators)

If you administrate Solaris, or look after applications support (or a hundred other similar technical roles!) then our Solaris Utilities and Shell Programming (formerly Solaris for Users/Administrators) course provides essential skills to get the absolute most out of the Solaris system. The two main areas covered are Solaris utilities (the nawk, sed, grep and sort variety, plus many others including tar, dd and find; Oh, and differentail commands such as comm and diff) and Bourne/Korn shell programming. These sections will give you the skills required to write (and understand= !) complex shell command procedures to automate many tasks such as reports, backups, adding users, data manipulation, system monitoring, and so much more. You'll also learn the more intricate and powerful aspects of the vi editor (Not too long on this though!) plus the print spooling mecahnism. A real power-users course designed to make the most of Solaris.

Solaris 10 Administration - Part 1

Essential skills for successful and secure systems administration. Solaris 10 System Administration (Part 1), the first in a series of three admin courses, concentrates on the important areas common to all workstations, such as Solaris installation, software management the admin GUI tools, Startup and Shutdown, File system management and security, taking backups AND restoring (even a complete system!), plus adding printers and disks. Everyone who needs to look after a Solaris system should start here. This course is the equivalent of the Sun SA-200-S10 Intermediate Administration course, but it covers more for a lot less money!

Solaris 10 Administration - Part 2

For those who manage networked Solaris machines, the Solaris 10 System Administration (Part 2) course is as essential as the part 1 and covers all the skills necessary to successfully network your Solaris machines. You will understand how to physically connect them, then look at the IP address scheme and get machines talking. Basic access commands, security control, network processes, and network monitoring are all there. Move on to thoroughly explore the NFS (Network File System) file sharing mechanism (even auto-mounting user home directories!) Learn how to store and manage admin files centrally using the NIS name service (a full working set up of NIS is created - by YOU!) Set up basic SAMBA file sharing and Apache web server configurations, and finally, configure e-mail on your local Solaris network. This course combined with the Solaris 10 Advanced Administration course are the equivalent of the Sun SA-202-S10 course.

Solaris 10 Advanced System Administration

Solaris 10 Advanced System Administration is great 3-day course for those involved in larger networks, and professionals who need to have the broad range of skills to offer in todays Solaris market. Kernel parameters, X-Windows, Jump Start and Build servers, Flash Installs, Solaris Volume Manager (SVM), and many other topics. Disk Quotas, Crash and core dump management, Access Control Lists, RBAC, System Messaging and Log Management. Also covered is DHCP server and client setup, and Solaris Accounting mechanisms, and not forgetting the new Solaris containers (Zones) facility for creating additional Solaris environments on the same machine - covered in some detail. Again - a lot more for your money. This course combined with the Solaris 10 Administration Part 2 course are the equivalent of the Sun SA-202-S10 course.

Solaris 10 Network Administration

This five-day Solaris 10 Network Administration course is designed to cover Solaris network administration in depth and is an extension to our Solaris 10 System Administration (Part 1) and Solaris 10 Systems Administration (Part 2). This course covers many networking topics, including the TCP/IP model; network topologies, media, interfaces and utilities; ARP and RARP; configuring IP; IPMP (Multipathing); routing; IPV6 (IP version 6); DNS (Domain Name System);  DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol); NTP (Network Time Protocol) and IP Filter Firewall. Additional topics are also covered, including Link Aggregations with dladm, Wireless Network configuratiom, and ISCSI configuration, with full hands-on experience at all stages. This course is comparable with the Sun SA-300-S10 course and leads to the Solaris Certified Network Administrator CX-310-302 exam.

Solaris 10 Update Workshop

Solaris 10 Update Workshop this workshop is intended for Solaris Administrators who wish to quickly get up to speed with the new features of Solaris 10. It covers all the major new facilities, in a workshop environment, providing extensive hands-on practicals.

If you have three or more staff to train, may we suggest you visit our custom department for information about extra modules and on-site training?