Q. What are some books I can use as a UNIX reference?

A.   Disclaimer   Powder River Technologies, Inc. and NetPRT do not endorse or warrant the books listed here, or their authors. These are provided as example reference materials for the topic requested. Powder River Technologies, Inc. recommends that you inspect all books for your personal tastes and needs.

Q. What is operational support?

A. In many ways, IT is not unlike a manufacturing operation when it comes to operations. In manufacturing, once you have your product developed, operations is the part of the business that makes sure you can manufacture your product in response to orders.

IT operations are similar in concept. Once you have created your service, operations is the part of the business that makes sure everything is running correctly and that people have access to the right services.

At NetPRT, we provide operational support to our clients and customers as part of their monthly subscription. Part of that support is daily backups in case files are lost. We also make sure that the various software services, such as FTP and the webservers, are up and running properly. Most importantly, if you have problems managing your account, we are here to resolve those problems.

Q. Suppose I have a problem with my webpage. Does that come under operational support?

A. That depends on what the problem is. If your webpage cannot be returned by the webserver and is due to a malfunction of the webserver, then yes, that is an operational support problem. However, if the problem is with the content on the webpage, or the file permissions are not set properly, then that is not an operational support problem. Web page content is something that we can help you with as part of the services that we offer. See the General FAQS about file permissions.

Q. Suppose I have a problem with a third party application that I am running on your server. Does that come under support?

A. Generally, no. Most applications are proprietary solutions, or are solutions that are crafted by a team of people to solve a problem. We can help with questions about the platform, but application problems must be solved by the supplier.