Sys Admin - Technical Advice

Some notes on technical System Admin stuff...


0. The most impressive guy I ever worked with, was not only very bright, but realised he had to organise what he knew.
1. Microsoft is not the be-all and and-all.
2. SAGE-AU - The System Admin Guild.
3. Basic Skills
4. MCSE training.
5. Professional Development.
6. Technical Career Planning
7. Career Planning.
8. Your CV is everything.
9. Performance, Monitoring, Security and Admin
10. In Computing, we are always inventing ourselves out of work.
11. Leverage your special knowledge.
12. Technology Evolves - stay with it.

0. The most impressive guy I ever worked with, DD (D-Squared), was not only
   very bright, but realised he had to organise what he knew.  In 1995,
   he stored everything arcane he'd learned, as well as useful tools
   in a PDA.
   And over time it builds on itself - a 20%/year improvement puts you
   double in 3.5 years and quadruple in 4 years.
   Look at "Star Performer" for research/ideas on *becoming*
   outstanding.  It's intentional, deliberate and focussed.
   
   
Action: Plan how you are going to organise & store what you learn.
        This has got to include web materials that may evaporate.
        With 'flash' memory at $100 for 2Gb, you can carry it always.
    
    
1. Microsoft is not the be-all and and-all.
   Within 5 years, they will suffer a commercial crisis.
   And when they do, the Corporate IT Landscape will undergo a
    substansial disruptive change.
   The Unix/Posix environment is not only useful, but most everywhere
   else. Mac OS/X is built on it well.
   There are a huge number of very good and free tools out there,
   most are born on Unix/Linux, but usually translate to Windows...
    
Action: Get into Linux at home and CYGWIN at work.
        The most radical & important difference is "packages".
         - The ideas apply everywhere & CYGWIN includes 'deb' & 'rpm'.
        Buy your own copy of VMware.
        Disk is cheap, you can have many O/S on your PC :-)
    
      
2. SAGE-AU - The System Admin Guild. 
   This is your key professional resource.  Your boss/work, if they are
   serious about doing *good* admin, should pay for both membership and
   going to the yearly conference.
   Also, , the US/Global version, is worth joining
   on your own dime for a year or two...
   They have a very good collection of "short topics in Admin"
   
   which are available for download to members. 
    
Action: Join SAGE-AU.  Probably too late to get to Conf. July 24-28.
        join SAGE (USENIX)soon and download their booklets.
    
    
3. Basic Skills
   How fast can you type?  What do you do to improve this skill?
   It's not about how fast you can type commands, but email, reports,
   ...

Action: What other basic skills are there??
        What are you doing about improving them?
        What's your basic tool-kit for troubleshooting?


4. MCSE training.
   The best resource I found was the "transcender" exams on disk.
   They have a number of sets of questions.  Doing the first
   trial exam repeatedly, shows you what you do and don't know. They also
   include mini-tutorials on each question, so it's a way to learn.
   You then have in reserve the next or other exams to test yourself.

Action: Go do some of the Transcender exams.  Log the results.


5. Professional Development. 
   * ITIL is building into a strong fad. get basic skills, know the lingo.
     Consider some of the very expensive training.
   * Seeking out and joining your local professional orgs is good.
   * Not joining poor societies is as important.
     Avoid expensive societies that have few Member Benefits.
     Talk to members and if you can, ex-members, for the inside 'gen'.
   * Becoming a mover and shaker - being actively involved, for a
     limited time, in the org. is a great way to meet people and to get
     known. [Who knows you is the most important thing]
   * Planning to write papers and present at conferences is a good
     career strategy.
   * Other organisations, Rotary/Apex/??? have been useful to some.
   * You can form your own SIG (Special Interest Group).
     Expect to be met with apathy and disinterest...
     Absence of feedback is the norm - even when they like what you say.
   * As a career employee, you have to answer these two questions:
        - Where are the best places to work?
        - How can I be valued & appreciated for what I do?
   * The ideal outcome is never apply for a job - to always get
     head-hunted.

Action: Develop plans for using at least two professional groups.


6. Technical Career Planning
   What technical areas appeal to you?  Servers, Desktop, Help-desk,
   build/install or maintenance, web, commercial, ISP, Telco, database,
   networking, ...
   No matter what you do, you will have to know a few scripting
   languages - Perl is a great start. Python is useful too probably.
   In the world of Open Source, 'C' is the lingua-franca.
   You have to be able to download, extract, make, install and read
   'C' programs.  I'm not keen on Java for servers, fits browsers brilliantly.

Action: Consider what you like doing & would like to keep doing.
        Have you met it yet?  Do you know yet?
        What scripting language are you going to learn & develop.


7. Career Planning.
   Have a look at my doc on "The Professional Career Curve":
    
   Older and less well written:
    
   *Now* is the time to be considering what you want to do next...
   If you want to be a) management b) self-employed/contractor or 
   c) your own business, you need to be setting up for this right now.

Action: What are your 'druthers' for the next 5 and 10 years?


8. Your CV is everything.
   My CV doesn't get me work or do justice to what I've done and can do.
   Don't follow me on this. Experienced friends should know a lot about this.
   You may need multiple CV's, or a bunch of std. paras to cut/paste.

Action: Get a *professional* rewrite of your CV.
        You need to keep this updated every 3-6 months,
          especially while you're working.

9. Performance, Monitoring, Security and Admin
   If you decide to get into "security", it's a big deal.  There is a
   lot of detail, and a bunch of it is v. boring and drudgery...
   But as a practising professional admin, you've got to know the
   basics.
   I.T. is done for a Business Benefit, Infrastructure is basic tools.
   All of this depends on being able to quantify performance, and
   know if things are OK or have turned to mush.
   You've got to have basic Performance Analysis and Capacity Analysis/Planning
   skills and knowledge - and learn a set of Performance Monitoring
   tools.  I can recommend Neil Gunthers' work - but may be too arcane.
   "Nagios" and Big Brother/Sister are good places to start.

Action: Go research monitoring tools :-)
        Ask people about at your work about Performance & Monitoring.
        Secure, Remote access to systems is important - learn SSH.


10. In Computing, we are always inventing ourselves out of work.
    In 1975, there was high demand for "tape librarians", operators and
    shift leaders - and people who did printers, cards and paper.
    They've all been replaced by technology, tools and techniques.
    The basic number, my "stp-mark", of the number of desktops &
    servers your average self-trained IT guy can put together & run
    with a credit-card at Harvey Normans/Dick Smith's, keeps rising...
    The number desktops, servers, users and applications per admin
    keeps increasing...
    SOE's keep developing.

    We know two things:
        - the number of admins per site will keep decreasing
        - effective support can only be delivered on-site
        - remote tools & support is increasing.

    How will these factors affect professional Admins?
    Will we ever reach the level of 2-admins per 1,000 desktop/user?
    [Can't ever have just one - holidays, succession and single-point-failure]
    In such a world, how will companies employ admins?
    How will local support be done?


Action: What do you see the industry trends to be? Over 1,5&10 years.
        CPU's, memory, networks, storage, O/S, services, admin.


11. Leverage your special knowledge.
    See "Measuring and Motiving Maintenance Programmers".
    This book impressed me so much, I scanned & OCR'd it.
    [With permission of authors' estate.]
    It's short, 96pp.
    Jerry Landsbaum was an engineer who moved into I.T.  I think he did
    an outstanding job because he leveraged his professional
    knowledge...

Action: Read the book.
        Consider the special knowledge & skills you have from your past
        work and study and how they can give you a Professional Edge.


12. Technology Evolves - stay with it.
    The IT industry regularly passes through 'event horizons'. The biggest in the
    last 15 years was 'The Internet' (really http + browser). More follow.
    You have to keep on or ahead of the curve or become career roadkill...
  * Herb Sutter's "The Free Lunch is Over" mentions in an aside that in early 2003
      the doubling period of Moore's Law radically changed - but MIPS continue
      to increase through multi-cores. This changes the game completely.
    * Tape storage $/Gb is a lot more expensive than hard-disk.
      NetApp came up with "Snapshots" in the early 1990's.
      They are as important and radical change as RAID was.
    * My 'multiverse' and PSIoN ideas will underpin a new Internet/Web.
      You have an inside track there :-)
    * Around 1.7Ghz, Corporate Desktops became "sufficient". Until then, they were
      the high-end of the market. Now the bleeding-edge is
    * Laptops and wireless ethernet are a match made in heaven. They complement
      each other perfectly.  The sub-$1000 laptop and 300Mbps wireless shift the
      equation more heavily away from Desktops in most applications.
    * What's different on the desktop since Win-95 [or Mac 84]? Not hardware or speed/size.
      Mostly, very little.
      XML, Flash memory, MP3 and USB have created a whole raft of new applications and
      devices.
    * Blogs - are they a blip, fad or something new?
    * Wiki's are the perfect tool for Group Documentation.
    * Where are the Tablet computers?
    * How are 'smart-phones' and high-end PDS's going to compete with cheap, small laptops?
    * SUN's "datacenter in a box" [20' container] could be the start of a whole
      new approach to computing - not just "Lights Out", but "Locked Down".
    * Computers aren't computers anymore.
      The PC created the desktop and ended the Glass Tower of the isolated mainframe.
      Ethernet enabled file and print sharing - general 'workgroup' computing.
      Internet protocols enabled real networking.
      Alta Vista, Google and friends freed content on the Net.
      Credit Cards enable e-commerce.
      Today we have Office-Tools, appliances, embeded systems, servers, distributed
      applications and central apps - as well as High Availability, Mobile Computing,
      Personal devices and more.

      The on-going evolution of IT requires rethinking the basics, often.
      Distinguishing fads, fashions and hype from real discontinuities requires
      insight.
      Repeating what worked 10-15 years ago is now radically under-performing -
      staying technologically stuck will lead to groups or companies to be replaced.

Action: Create mechanisims to stay informed.
        Learn to filter 'flash and sizzle' from What's Important.


Hope this is useful. Hope it doesn't seem too much to start with.
I've most likely forgotten stuff and will issue updates :-)

Feel free to share and get comments.  You need to form your own views on
things...