I am a long time UNIX system administrator and open source advocate. In recent years my primary focus as been on Linux & FreeBSD systems administration, networking, telecom, and SAN/storage management. I love building infrastructure, tying systems together, creating processes, and bringing people together in support of their technical efforts.
When I can, I try to contribute back to the open source projects either with patches, or by helping others in technical support forums.
Authored Comments
Thanks ... looks like a clear recipe to help people kick off a devops career.
2nd story, Jamie Duncan, right on! I made a similar comment on another thread here on opensource.com .... Being the head of an IT department, I much more value things running quietly and predictably. I know I have good people that will put in the heroic effort when needed, and all of us certainly have those "all nighter" stories to remember.
One thing that pains many sysadmins is the lack of recognition you get for well running systems. People get used to good environments and don't understand what it takes to keep them running. I find more junior sysadmins get disheartened over this. That makes it doubly important for the manager or leader of that department to interact, groom, train, mentor, and guide the team at every opportunity. I truly appreciate the people working for me and keeping morale up is important.
Not that I'm complaining, but I find very few people go out of their way to thank sysadmins for their constant attention to the important details. For anyone reading this, it goes a long way if you offer any simple praise or thanks to some effort well done -- or simply expressing gratitude for not being subjected to lots of system outage.
It also helps boost sysadmin morale when you actually read their e-mail notices, and respond. Bonus points if you are helpful! How many of us sysadmins send multiple important notices about issues/maintenance, only then to be barraged with panic escalations when your carefully communicated and pre-planned work begins.
To me, a sysadmin hero is someone who is technically competent, keeps the level of system outage very low, is genuinely helpful to end-users, and has a great work ethic to do the right thing when the need arises.