# Tools for managing a small mixed network



## grep2grok (Nov 15, 2015)

Hello, I seem to have adopted a small research network with freebsdFreeBSD storage, a Windows app server, and Windows and Mac clients. No doubt I am adopting lots of quirks from every OS, and FreeBSD is certainly the least of my worries. That said, I'm a physician, not a programmer or IT professional by training, and I suspect that a lot of folks here have way more experience with these problems than I do.

So, what are some resources (forums, etc) that the average Google search isn't going to necessarily yield yet are populated by smart people who know how to deal with this stuff?


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## Oko (Nov 15, 2015)

I am in the similar position having being trained as a research mathematician now in charge of about 80 machine cluster/network of premier machine learning/data mining research group at the major research university. I know of several people on this forum who are trained as scientist and statisticians now forced to manage their computing
infrastructure. It is really hard to point a single useful source. Fell free to send me public or private messages and I will be happy to try to help you.

We use FreeBSD primary as a storage OS and light weight virtualization host (Jails). Core network infrastructure runs OpenBSD which is my primary OS. Anything scientific computing related runs Springdale Linux which is Princeton University Red Hat clone. We use Springdale as a virtual KVM host and desktop OS for research stuff. We have 3 Window 7 machines in the lab on business desktops. We don't use MAC but one of my daughters has MAC book Pro so I am very familiar with OS X.


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## protocelt (Nov 16, 2015)

The FreeBSD mailing lists have a wealth of information and are quite helpful.


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