Awesome Sysadmin

Software

Automation

Automation build.

• Apache Ant - Automation build tool, similar to make, written in Java.
• Apache Maven - Build automation tool mainly for Java.
• Bazel - Google’s build system.
• Bolt - You can use Bolt to run one-off tasks, scripts to automate the provisioning and management of some nodes, you can use Bolt to move a step beyond scripts, and make them shareable.
• GNU Make - The most popular automation build tool for many purposes.
• Gradle - Another build automation system.
• Rake - Build automation tool similar to Make, written in and extensible in Ruby.

Backups

Backup software. Also see Restic’s list of Linux backup software.

• Amanda - Client-server model backup tool.
• Backupninja - Lightweight, extensible meta-backup system.
• BackupPC - BackupPC is a high-performance system for backing up to disk.
• Bareos - A fork of Bacula backup tool.
• Barman - Backup and Recovery Manager for disaster recovery of PostgreSQL servers.
• BorgBackup - A fork of Attic deduplicating backup program written in Python.
• Burp - Network backup and restore program.
• DREBS - AWS EBS backup script that supports strategies.
• Dar - Which stands for Disk ARchive, is a robust and rich featured archiving and backup software of the tar style. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 C++
• Duplicati - Multiple backends, encryption, web-ui and multi-OS backup tool.
• Duplicity - Encrypted bandwidth-efficient backup using the rsync algorithm.
• Elkarbackup - Backup solution based on RSnapshot with a simple web interface
• rclone - a command line program to sync files and directories to and from several cloud storage systems/providers.
• Rdiff-backup - An easy A remote incremental backup of all your files.
• Restic - Secure, remote backup tool. Designed to be easy, fast, verifiable and efficient.
• Rsnapshot - Filesystem Snapshotting Utility.
• Shield - A pluggable architecture for backup and restore of database systems.
• Snebu – Snapshot backup with global multi-client deduplication and transparent compression.
• UrBackup - Another client-server backup system.
• ZBackup - A versatile deduplicating backup tool.

Build and software organization tools

Build and software organization tools.

• EasyBuild - EasyBuild builds software and modulefiles for High Performance Computing (HPC) systems in an efficient way.
• environment-modules Lmod - Lmod is a Lua based module system that easily handles the MODULEPATH Hierarchical problem.
• HPCBIOS - HPCBIOS is an effort to setup a common, well-documented and reproducible, environment spanning across multiple HPC systems & sites, inclusive of documentation.
• Spack - A flexible package manager that supports multiple versions, configurations, platforms, and compilers.

ChatOps

Conversation-driven development and management. See https://www.reddit.com/r/chatops for more information.

• Eggdrop - The oldest Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bot still in active development. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 C
• Errbot - a plugin based chatbot designed to be easily deployable, extensible and maintainable. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 Python
• Hubot - A customizable, life embetterment robot. (Source Code) MIT Nodejs

Client management

Managing software on desktop computers.

See also: IT Asset Management

• Chocolatey – The package manager for Windows. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 C#/PowerShell

Cloning

Cloning software.

• Clonezilla - Partition and disk imaging/cloning program. (Source Code) GPL-2.0/Other Perl/Shell/Other
• Fog - Cloning/imaging solution/rescue suite. (Sorce Code) GPL-3.0 PHP/Shell

Cloud Computing

• CloudStack - Cloud computing software for creating, managing, and deploying infrastructure cloud services. (Source Code)
• Cobbler - Cobbler is a Linux installation server that allows for rapid setup of network installation environments. (Source Code)
• Mesos - Develop and run resource-efficient distributed systems.
• OpenNebula - User-driven cloud management platform for sysadmins and devops.
• Openshift - PaaS product from Red Hat.
• OpenStack - Build private and public clouds.
• The Foreman - Complete lifecycle management tool for physical and virtual servers. FOSS.
• Tsuru - Tsuru is an extensible Platform as a Service software.

Cloud Orchestration

• BOSH - IaaS orchestration platform originally written for deploying and managing Cloud Foundry PaaS, but also useful for general purpose distributed systems.
• Cloud Foundry - A Platform-as-a-Service suite to provide the orchestration services that make distributed apps a powerhouse of awesomeness.
• Cloudify - TOSCA-based cloud orchestration software platform written in Python and YAML.
• CloudSlang - Flow-based orchestration tool for managing deployed applications, with Docker capabilities.
• Genesis - A template framework for multi-environment BOSH deployments.
• Juju - Cloud orchestration tool which manages services as charms, YAML configuration and deployment script bundles.
• Kubernetes - Orchestration system for Docker containers - (Source Code, Documentation) Apache-2.0 Go
• MCollective - Ruby framework to manage server orchestration, developed by Puppet labs.
• Nomad - Simple and flexible orchestrator for Docker, Podman, executables, Java, and QEMU - (Source Code, Documentation) MPL-2.0 Go
• Overcast - Deploy VMs across different cloud providers, and run commands and scripts across any or all of them in parallel via SSH.
• Rundeck - Simple orchestration tool.
• Salt - Fast, scalable and flexible systems management software written in Python/ZeroMQ.
• Spruce - A tool that merges separate YAML files into one. Works well with Genesis.
• StackStorm - Event Driven Operations and ChatOps platform for infrastructure management. Written in Python.
• Terraform - Terraform works with many cloud providers and creates infrastructure from code.

Code Review

Web Based collaborative code review system.

• Gerrit - Based on the Git version control, it facilitates software developers to review modifications to the source code and approve or reject those changes.
• Phabricator - Code review tool build by facebook and used by WikiMedia, FB, dropbox etc. Comes with an integrated wiki, bug tracker, VC integration and a CLI tool called arcanist.
• Review Board - Available as free software under the MIT License.

Configuration Management Database

Configuration management database (CMDB) software.

See also: IT Asset Management

• Collins - At Tumblr, it’s the infrastructure source of truth and knowledge.
• i-doit - IT Documentation and CMDB.
• iTop - Complete ITIL web based service management tool.
• netbox - IP address management (IPAM) and data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tool

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.
• Pallet - Infrastructure definition, configuration and management via a Clojure DSL.
• Puppet - It’s written in Ruby and uses Puppet’s declarative language or a Ruby DSL.
• Salt - It’s written in Python.

Continuous Integration & Continuous Deployment

Continuous integration/deployment software.

• Buildbot - Python-based toolkit for continuous integration. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 Python
• CapsuleCD - CD script for automating package/library releases (npm, cookbooks, gems, pip, jars, etc). (Source Code) MIT Go
• CDS - Enterprise-Grade Continuous Delivery & DevOps Automation Open Source Platform. (Source Code) BSD-3-Clause Go
• Concourse - Concourse is a CI tool that treats pipelines as first class objects and containerizes every step along the way. (Demo, Source Code) Apache-2.0 Go
• drone - Drone is a Continuous Delivery platform built on Docker, written in Go. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Go
• Factor - Programmatically define and run workflows to connect configuration management, source code management, build, continuous integration, continuous deployment and communication tools. (Source Code) MIT Ruby
• GitLab CI - Gitlab’s built-in, full-featured CI/CD solution. (Source Code) MIT Ruby
• GoCD - Continuous delivery server. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Java/Ruby
• GolangCI - Open Source automated code review service for Go integrated with GitHub pull requests. (Source Code) AGPL-3.0 Go
• Jenkins - Continuous Integration Server. (Source Code) MIT Java
• Laminar - Fast, lightweight, simple and flexible Continuous Integration. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 C++
• PHP Censor - Open source self-hosted continuous integration server for PHP projects. BSD-2-Clause PHP
• PHPCI - Free and open source continuous integration specifically designed for PHP. (Source Code) BSD-2-Clause PHP
• Strider - Open Source Continuous Deployment / Continuous Integration platform. (Source Code) MIT Nodejs
• werf - Open Source CI/CD tool for building Docker images and deploying to Kubernetes via GitOps. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Go
• Woodpecker - Community fork of Drone that uses Docker containers. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Go

Control Panels

Web hosting and server or service control panels.

• Ajenti - Control panel for Linux and BSD. (Source Code) MIT Python/Shell
• Cockpit - web-based graphical interface for servers. (Source Code) LGPL-2.1 C
• Froxlor - Lightweight server management software with Nginx and PHP-FPM support. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 PHP
• ISPConfig - Manage Linux servers directly through your browser. (Source Code) BSD-3-Clause PHP
• Sentora - Open-Source Web hosting control panel for Linux, BSD (fork of ZPanel). (Source Code) GPL-3.0 PHP
• VestaCP - Open-Source hosting control panel. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 PHP/Shell/Other
• Virtualmin - Powerful and flexible web hosting control panel for Linux and BSD systems. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 Shell/Perl/Other
• Webmin - Web-based interface for system administration for Unix. (Source Code) BSD-3-Clause Perl

Databases

Database servers.

Please visit dbdb.io - Database of Databases

See also: awesome-selfhosted/Database Management

Deployment Automation

Tools and scripts to support deployments to your servers.

• Capistrano - Deploy your application to any number of machines simultaneously, in sequence or as a rolling set via SSH (rake based).
• Fabric - Python library and cli tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks.
• Mina - Really fast deployer and server automation tool (rake based).
• munki - Webserver-based repository of packages and package metadata, that allows macOS administrators to manage software installs.
• Vlad the Deployer - Deployment automation (rake based).

Diagramming

Tools used to create diagrams of networks, flows, etc.

• Diagrams.net - A.K.A. Draw.io. Easy to use Diagram UI with a plethora of templates.
• DrawThe.Net - Javascript tool that uses a YAML-formatted input to programmatically create large, complex, and visually solid diagrams.
• Mermaid - Javascript module with a unique, easy, shorthand syntax. Integrates into several other tools like Grafana.

Distributed Filesystems

^ back to top ^

Network distributed filesystems.

• Ceph - Distributed object store and file system.
• DRBD - Distributed Replicated Block Device.
• GlusterFS - Scale-out network-attached storage file system.
• Go IPFS - Implementation of IPFS, a global, versioned, peer-to-peer filesystem that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files.
• HDFS - Distributed, scalable, and portable file-system written in Java for the Hadoop framework.
• LeoFS - Unstructured object/data storage and a highly available, distributed, eventually consistent storage system.
• Lustre - Parallel distributed file system, generally used for large-scale cluster computing.
• Minio - Minio is an open source object storage server compatible with Amazon S3 APIs. (Source Code) AGPL-3.0 Go
• MooseFS - Fault tolerant, network distributed file system.
• OpenAFS - Distributed network file system with read-only replicas and multi-OS support.
• Perkeep (née Camlistore) - A set of open source formats, protocols, and software for modeling, storing, searching, sharing and synchronizing data.
• SheepDog - A distributed Blockdevice, Rest, QEMU and distributed Filesystem storage.
• Swift - A highly available, distributed, eventually consistent object/blob store.
• 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.
• CoreDNS - Flexible DNS server written on Go.
• Designate - DNS REST API that support several DNS servers as its backend.
• djbdns - A collection of DNS applications, including tinydns.
• dnsmasq - A lightweight service providing DNS, DHCP and TFTP services to small-scale networks.
• 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.

DNS - Control Panels

DNS server control panels.

• Atomia DNS - DNS management system.
• nsedit - nsedit is a DNS editor for PowerDNS, working with PowerDNS’s new API.
• PDNS Gui - WebGUI which aids in administering domains and records for PowerDNS with MySQL.
• Pi-hole - A blackhole for Internet Advertisements with a gui for managing and monitoring
• Poweradmin - Friendly web-based DNS administration tool for PowerDNS server.

DNS - Domain Management

Domain management.

• DNSControl - Synchronize your DNS to multiple providers from a simple DSL. (Source Code) MIT Go/Docker
• DomainMOD - Manage your domains and other internet assets in a central location. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 PHP
• octoDNS - DNS as code - Tools for managing DNS across multiple providers. MIT Python

Editors

Open source code editors.

• Atom Community - A fork of atom A hackable text editor from Github.
• Brackets - 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.
• ICEcoder - Code editor awesomeness, built with common web languages.
• jotgit - Git-backed real-time collaborative code editing.
• KDevelop - IDE by the people behind KDE.
• Micro - A modern and intuitive terminal-based text editor
• Nano - Easy to use, customizable text editor.
• Notepad++ - GPLv2 multi-language editor with syntax highlighting for Windows.
• TextMate - A graphical text editor for OS X.
• Vim - A highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient editing.
• VSCodium - An open source cross-platform extensible code editor based on VS Code by Microsoft removing their non-free additions.

Identity Management

LDAP servers and other tools to manage accounts and identities.

Identity Management - LDAP

• 389 Directory Server - Enterprise-class Open Source LDAP server for Linux. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 C
• Apache Directory Server - Extensible and embeddable directory server, certified LDAPv3 compatible, with Kerberos 5 and Change Password Protocol support, triggers, stored procedures, queues and views. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Java
• FreeIPA - Integrated security information management solution combining Linux (Fedora), 389 Directory Server, Kerberos, NTP, DNS, and Dogtag Certificate System (web interface and command-line administration tools). (Source Code) GPL-3.0 Python/C/JavaScript
• FreeRADIUS - Multi-protocol policy server (radiusd) that implements RADIUS, DHCP, BFD, and ARP and associated client/PAM library/Apache module. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 C
• lldap - Light (simplified) LDAP implementation with a simple, intuitive web interface and GraphQL support. GPL-3.0 Rust
• OpenLDAP - Open-source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (server, libraries and clients). (Source Code) OLDAP-2.8 C

Identity Management - Tools and web interfaces

• BounCA - A personal SSL Key / Certificate Authority web-based tool for creating self-signed certificates.
• easy-rsa - bash script to build and manage a PKI CA.
• Fusion Directory - Improve the Management of the services and the company directory based on OpenLDAP.
• Indieauth - Sign in with your domain name (using the rel-me-auth protocol).
• LDAP Account Manager (LAM) - Web frontend for managing entries (e.g. users, groups, DHCP settings) stored in an LDAP directory.
• Libravatar - Libravatar is a service which delivers your avatar (profile picture) to other websites.
• OpenID Connect - A Simple Identity layer on top of OAuth 2.0.
• OSIAM - Secure identity management solution providing REST based services for authentication and authorization.
• Pomerium - An identity and context aware access-proxy inspired by BeyondCorp.
• Samba – Active Directory and CIFS protocol implementation.
• Smallstep Certificates - A private certificate authority (X.509 & SSH) and related tools for secure automated certificate management.
• ZITADEL - Cloud-native Identity & Access Management solution providing a platform for secure authentication, authorization and identity management.

Identity Management - Single Sign-On (SSO)

• Authelia - The Single Sign-On Multi-Factor portal for web apps. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Go
• KeyCloak - Open Source Identity and Access Management. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Java

IT Asset Management

IT Assets Management software.

• GLPI - Information Resource-Manager with an additional Administration Interface. (Source Code)
• OCS Inventory NG - Asset management and deployment solution for all devices in your IT Department. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 PHP/Perl
• OPSI - Hardware and software inventory, client management, deployment, and patching for Linux and Windows. (Source Code) GPL-3.0/AGPL-3.0 OVF/Python
• RackTables - Datacenter and server room asset management like document hardware assets, network addresses, space in racks, networks configuration. (Source Code, Demo) GPL-2.0 PHP
• Ralph - Asset management, DCIM and CMDB system for large Data Centers as well as smaller LAN networks. (Source Code, Demo) Apache-2.0 Python/Docker
• Snipe IT - Asset & license management software. (Source Code) AGPL-3.0 PHP

Log Management

Log management tools: collect, parse, visualize …

• Fluentd - Data collector for unified logging layer. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Ruby
• Flume - distributed, reliable, and available service for efficiently collecting, aggregating, and moving large amounts of log data. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Java
• GoAccess - Real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal or through the browser. (Source Code) MIT C
• Loki - Log aggregation system designed to store and query logs from all your applications and infrastructure. (Source Code) AGPL-3.0 Go
• rsyslog - Rocket-fast system for log processing. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 C

Mail Clients

• Claws Mail - Old school email client (and news reader), based on GTK+. (Source Code)
• ImapSync – Simple IMAP migration tool for copying mailboxes to other servers. (Source Code)
• Mutt - Small but very powerful text-based mail client. (Source Code)
• Sylpheed – Still developed predecessor to Claws Mail, lightweight mail client. (Source Code)
• Thunderbird - Free email application that’s easy to set up and customize. (Source Code)

Monitoring

Monitoring software.

• Adagios - Web based Nagios interface for configuration and monitoring (replacement to the standard interface), and a REST interface. (Source Code) AGPL-3.0 Docker/Python
• Alerta - Distributed, scaleable and flexible monitoring system. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Python
• Bloonix - Bloonix is a monitoring solution that helps businesses to ensure high availability and performance. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 Perl
• Bosun - Monitoring and alerting system by Stack Exchange (Source Code) MIT Go
• Cabot - Monitoring and alerts, similar to PagerDuty. (Source Code) MIT Python
• Cacti - Web-based network monitoring and graphing tool. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 PHP
• cadvisor - Analyzes resource usage and performance characteristics of running containers (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Go
• checkmk - Comprehensive solution for monitoring of applications, servers, and networks. (Source Code) Python/PHP
• EdMon - A command-line monitoring application helping you to check that your hosts and services are available, with notifications support. MIT Java
• eZ Server Monitor - A lightweight and simple dashboard monitor for Linux, available in Web and Bash application. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 PHP/Shell
• Healthchecks - Monitoring for cron jobs, background services and scheduled tasks. (Source Code) BSD-3-Clause Python
• Icinga - Nagios fork that has since lapped nagios several times. Comes with the possibility of clustered monitoring. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 C++
• LibreNMS - Fully featured network monitoring system that provides a wealth of features and device support. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 PHP
• Linux Dash - A low-overhead monitoring web dashboard for a GNU/Linux machine. MIT Nodejs/Go/Python/PHP
• Monit - Small utility for managing and monitoring Unix systems. (Source Code) AGPL-3.0 C
• Munin - Networked resource monitoring tool. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 Perl/Shell
• Naemon - Network monitoring tool based on the Nagios 4 core with performance enhancements and new features. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 C
• Nagios - Computer system, network and infrastructure monitoring software application. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 C
• Netdata - Distributed, real-time, performance and health monitoring for systems and applications. Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, and MacOS. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 C
• NetXMS - Open Source network and infrastructure monitoring and management. (Source Code) LGPL-3.0/GPL-3.0 Java/C++/C
• Observium - SNMP monitoring for servers and networking devices. Runs on linux.
• OMD - The Open Monitoring Distribution.
• Performance Co-Pilot - Lightweight, distributed system performance and analysis framework.
• PHP Server Monitor - Open source tool to monitor your servers and websites. (Source Code)
• PhpSysInfo - A customizable PHP script that displays information about your system nicely. (Source Code)
• pyDash - Small web-based monitoring dashboard for linux. (Source Code)
• Riemann - Flexible and fast events processor allowing complex events/metrics analysis. (Source Code)
• rtop - an interactive, remote system monitoring tool based on SSH. (Source Code)
• Scrutiny - Hard Drive S.M.A.R.T Monitoring, Historical Trends & Real World Failure Thresholds
• Sensu - Monitoring tool for ephemeral infrastructure and distributed applications. (Source Code)
• Status - Simple and lightweight system monitoring tool for small homeservers with a pleasant web interface. (Demo) MIT Python
• Thruk - Multibackend monitoring web interface with support for Naemon, Nagios, Icinga and Shinken. (Source Code)
• Zabbix - Enterprise-class software for monitoring of networks and applications. (Source Code)

Status Pages

Please visit awesome-selfhosted/Status / Uptime Pages

Metric & Metric Collection

Metric gathering and display software.

• Collectors only

  • Collectd - System statistic collection daemon.
  • Collectl - High precision system performance metrics collecting tool.
  • Diamond - Python based statistic collection daemon.
  • Statsd - Application statistic listener.
  • tcollector - System statistic collection daemon written in Python for OpenTSDB
  • Telegraf - The plugin-driven server agent for collecting & reporting metrics.

• Dashboards

  • 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.
  • Facette - Time series data visualization and graphing software written in Go.
  • Freeboard - A damn-sexy front-end real-time dashboard for the internet of things. Transforms raw JSON into delicious UI.
  • Ganglia - High performance, scalable RRD based monitoring for grids and/or clusters of servers. Compatible with Graphite using a single collection process.
  • Grafana - A Graphite & InfluxDB Dashboard and Graph Editor.
  • RRDtool - Industry standard, high performance data logging and graphing system for time series data.

• Storage

  • InfluxDB - Distributed time series database with no external dependencies.
  • KairosDB - Fast distributed scalable time series database, fork of OpenTSDB 1.x.
  • OpenTSDB - Store and server massive amounts of time series data without losing granularity.

• Packages

  • Graphite - Scalable graphing server.
  • Packetbeat - Captures network traffic and displays it in a custom Kibana dashboard for easy viewing.
  • Prometheus - Service monitoring system and time series database.
  • VictoriaMetrics - Service monitoring system and time series database.

Network Configuration Management

Network configuration management tools.

• GNS3 - Graphical network simulator that provides a variety of virtual appliances. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 Python
• OpenWISP - Open Source Network Management System for OpenWRT based routers and access points. (Demo, Source Code) GPL-3.0 Python
• Oxidized - Network device configuration backup tool. Apache-2.0 Ruby
• phpIPAM - Open source IP address management with PowerDNS integration. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 PHP
• RANCID - Monitor network devices configuration and maintain history of changes. (Source Code) BSD-3-Clause Perl/Shell
• rConfig - Network device configuration management tool. (Source Code) GPL-3.0 PHP

Newsletters

Newsletter software.

• DadaMail - Mailing List Manager, written in Perl.
• Lewsnetter - E-mail marketing application (create and send e-mail newsletter via SES). Includes subscription management, delivery, bounce and complaint notification, templates, and some stats.
• LibreMailer - Libre Mailer is a modest and simple web based email marketing application.
• phpList - Newsletter manager written in PHP.

Packaging

• aptly - Swiss army knife for Debian repository management. (Source Code) MIT Go
• fpm - Versatile multi format package creator.
• omnibus-ruby - Full stack, cross distro packaging software (Ruby).
• packman - Full stack, cross distro packaging software (Python).
• tito - Builds RPMs for git-based projects.

Project Management

Web-based project management and bug tracking systems

Please visit awesome-selfhosted/Project Management

Queuing

• ActiveMQ - Java message broker.
• BeanstalkD - A simple, fast work queue.
• Gearman - Fast multi-language queuing/job processing platform.
• Kafka - Extremely high performance publish/subscribe message system.
• NSQ - A realtime distributed messaging platform.
• RabbitMQ - Robust, fully featured, cross distro queuing system.
• ZeroMQ - Lightweight queuing system.

Remote Management

• Remmina - A Feature rich remote desktop application for linux and other unixes.
• Tiger VNC - TigerVNC is a high-performance, platform-neutral implementation of VNC (Virtual Network Computing), a client/server application that allows users to launch and interact with graphical applications on remote machines.
• X2go - X2Go is an open source remote desktop software for Linux that uses the NX technology protocol.

Router

• DD-WRT - A Linux-based firmware for wireless routers and access points, originally designed for the Linksys WRT54G series. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 C
• OpenWrt - A Linux-based router featuring Mesh networking, IPS via snort and AQM among many other features. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 C
• OPNsense - An open source FreeBSD-based firewall and router with traffic shaping, load balancing, and virtual private network capabilities. (Source Code) BSD-2-Clause C PHP

Service Discovery

• Consul - Consul is a tool for service discovery, monitoring and configuration.
• Doozerd - Doozer is a highly-available, completely consistent store for small amounts of extremely important data.
• etcd - distributed K/V-Store, authenticating via SSL PKI and a REST HTTP Api for shared configuration and service discovery.
• ZooKeeper - ZooKeeper is a centralized service for maintaining configuration information, naming, providing distributed synchronization, and providing group services.

Software Containers

Operating system–level virtualization.

• Docker Compose - Define and run multi-container Docker applications.
• Docker Swarm - Manage cluster of Docker Engines.
• Docker - Platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run distributed applications.
• LXC - Userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features.
• LXD – a container “hypervisor” and a better UX for LXC.
• OpenVZ - Container-based virtualization for Linux.
• Podman - Daemonless container engine for developing, managing, and running OCI Containers on your Linux System. Containers can either be run as root or in rootless mode. Simply put: alias docker=podman. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Go
• Portainer - Simple management UI for Docker.
• systemd-nspawn - Lightweight, chroot-like, environment to run an OS or command directly under systemd. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 C

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting Tools.

• grml – bootable Debian Live CD with powerful CLI tools.
• mitmproxy - A Python tool used for intercepting, viewing and modifying network traffic. Invaluable in troubleshooting certain problems.
• mtr - Network utility that combines traceroute and ping.
• perf-tools - Performance analysis tools based on Linux perf_events (aka perf) and ftrace.
• Sysdig - Capture system state and activity from a running Linux instance, then save, filter and analyze.
• Wireshark - The world’s foremost network protocol analyzer.

Version control

Software versioning and revision control.

• Darcs - Patch-based distributed version control (more info: wiki)
• 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.

• Archipel - XMPP based virtualization management platform.
• ConVirt - Provides the core functionality for centrally managing your KVM or Xen virtualized environment.
• Ganeti - Cluster virtual server management software tool built on top of KVM and Xen.
• KVM - Linux kernel virtualization infrastructure.
• OpenNebula - Flexible enterprise cloud made simple.
• OpenNode - Builds open-source infrastructure management software and implements cloud systems.
• oVirt - Manages virtual machines, storage and virtual networks.
• Packer - A tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration.
• Proxmox VE - Virtualization management solution.
• QEMU - QEMU is a generic machine emulator and virtualizer.
• Vagrant - Tool for building complete development environments.
• VirtualBox - Virtualization product from Oracle Corporation.
• XCP-ng - Based on Citrix XenServer, XCP-ng is a fully open source virtualization platform.
• Xen - Virtual machine monitor for 32/64 bit Intel / AMD (IA 64) and PowerPC 970 architectures.

VPN

VPN software.

• Dockovpn - Out-of-the-box stateless dockerized OpenVPN server which starts in less than 2 seconds.
• Firezone - WireGuard based VPN Server and Firewall.
• Headscale - Self-hostable fork of Tailscale, cross-platform clients, simple to use, built-in (currently experimental) monitoring tools.
• Nebula - A scalable p2p VPN with a focus on performance, simplicity and security.
• ocserv - Cisco AnyConnect-compatible VPN server
• OpenVPN - Uses a custom security protocol that utilizes SSL/TLS for key exchange.
• PiVPN - The simplest way to setup and manage a VPN, designed for Raspberry Pi. (Source Code) MIT Shell
• 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.
• WireGuard - Very fast VPN based on elliptic curve and public key crypto.

Web

Web servers and reverse proxies.

• Algernon - Small self-contained pure-Go web server with Lua, Markdown, HTTP/2, QUIC, Redis and PostgreSQL support. (Source Code) BSD-3-Clause Go
• Apache HTTP Server - Secure, efficient and extensible server that provides HTTP services in sync with the current HTTP standards. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 C
• Caddy - Powerful, enterprise-ready, open source web server with automatic HTTPS. (Source Code) Apache-2.0 Go
• HAProxy - Very fast and reliable reverse-proxy offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 C
• Hiawatha - An advanced and secure webserver for Unix. (Source Code) GPL-2.0 C
• Lighttpd - Secure, fast, compliant, and very flexible web server that has been optimized for high-performance environments. (Source Code) BSD-3-Clause C
• Nginx - HTTP and reverse proxy server, mail proxy server, and generic TCP/UDP proxy server. (Source Code) BSD-2-Clause C
• Traefik - HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices easy. (Source Code) MIT C/Docker
• Varnish - Web application accelerator/caching HTTP reverse proxy. (Source Code) BSD-2-Clause C

List of Licenses

• AGPL-3.0 - GNU Affero General Public License 3.0
• Apache-2.0 - Apache, Version 2.0
• BSD-2-Clause - BSD 2-clause “Simplified”
• BSD-3-Clause - BSD 3-Clause “New” or “Revised”
• GPL-2.0 - GNU General Public License 2.0
• GPL-3.0 - GNU General Public License 3.0
• MIT - MIT License
• MPL-2.0 - Mozilla Public License

External links

Communities / Forums

• ArsTechnica OpenForum – IT Forum which is attached to a large news site.
• Reddit - Really, really large bulletin board system.
  • /r/Linux - News and information about Linux.
  • /r/LinuxQuestions
  • /r/SysAdmin
• Spiceworks Community – General enterprise IT news and small articles.
• StackExchange Network – Q&A communities.
  • Server Fault – StackExchange community for system and network administrators.

Repositories

Software package repositories.

• AlternativeTo - Find alternatives to software you know and discover new software.
• deb.sury.org - Repository with LAMP updated packages for Debian and Ubuntu.
• ElRepo - Community Repo for Enterprise Linux (RHEL, CentOS, etc).
• EPEL - Repository for RHEL and compatibles (CentOS, Scientific Linux).
• IUS - Community project that provides RPM packages for newer versions of select software for Enterprise Linux distributions.
• Remi - Repository with LAMP updated packages for RHEL/Centos/Fedora.
• Software Collections - Community Release of Red Hat Software Collections. Provides updated packages of Ruby, Python, etc. for CentOS/Scientific Linux 6.x.

Websites

• ArchWiki – Arch Linux Wiki which has really nice written articles valid for other distros.
• Gentoo Wiki - Gentoo Linux Wiki with a lot in-detail description of Linux components.
• Awesome SysAdmin @ LibHunt - Your go-to SysAdmin Toolbox. Based on the list here.
• 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.

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.