guidelines for large Unix data center setup?

Question

Are there any blogs/ recommended readings on how to setup/configure/manage large ( 500 + ) unix servers in a single / multiple data center ? I am trying to understand best practices, network design suggestions as well.

Thanks

Answer 1

I'm not aware of any A-to-Z guides for this as usually people responsible for the design and build of a 500+ server environment have already gained significant experience in these basics. I'd be worried if you're being asked to do so yet asking for such basic, non-specific, help. Feel free to ask more specific questions here though.

Answer 2

Infrastructures.org has a good checklist of best practices and general guidelines. The information looks a little bit outdated, but most of the things they suggest are still to be considered when setting up a large data center environment.

Some of the topics covered:

1. Version Control
2. Gold Server
3. Directory/Authentication Servers
4. Network File Servers
5. Configuration/Application management
6. Monitoring
7. ...