Agile Sysadmin - A "short" rant

I came across an interesting lecture today from @bitfield about agile sysadmins with the amusing little question, "is your sysadmin dumber than a hamster".

I recommend following his presentation or reading the summary because he does bring up some real issues with most system administrators.

His key point is automation to get rid of all the repeative tasks that system administrators have to deal with and not dealing with that makes you dumber than a hamster (it would seem).

The author works as a freelance infrastructure system consultant and I perfectly understand where he is coming from. It is obvious to anyone that gets hired to fix infrastructures that automation, version control and configuration management will make a huge difference in day-to-day operations.

My experience

In my experience, that is not why companies hire system administrators. It should be, but it is not. I worked as a system administrator (before taking a break for my studies) for 6 years and my experience is that most of your time as a sysadmin is spent as a firefighter (reactive, not proactive).

I believe that all sysadmins know of areas of their job that can be improved with automation. Even reboot-monkeys (Windows Admin Stereotype) know that many of those things could be scripted or otherwise automated.

Then why not just do it?

• Not capable of automating (lacks programming knowledge)
• Fears that automation will leave him less 'important'
• Lack of resources (time, money, focus)

If I was hiring (or firing) my system administrator, the two first points are critical. Anyone can learn how to script so the real question is motivation. The second point is probably quite common but naive. Automation means less monkey-tasks and more time to improve the infrastructure (win-win). I just recommending informing your co-workers of improvements, because otherwise (also stated in the presentation) sysadmins rarely get notice unless something is broken.

Which brings me to the third point. If you want to be proactive it is important that you have the flexibility from your boss and your co-workers.

Aspects of the job

In my experience the job splits into (in terms of time available):

• 45% - Firefighting (Critical tasks that need your immediate attention)
• 45% - Support (High priority support tasks, some repetitive, some not
• 10% - Planning, upgrading, automating

The numbers are different for different jobs but my point is that there is little time for the proactive parts. Mostly because firefighting and support are in nature "priority tasks" that will interrupt any time you may have to improve your infrastructure.

Freelance consultants have the luxury of not being interrupted with reactive tasks while improving systems. Which is where I think John from Bitfield misses the point.

Stop your whining, be constructive!

• Use issue tracking. It will help to manage the time spent on support better.
• Automation should not be feared. You're still important. Everything fails at some point.
• Have a partner. Redundancy, motivation and less stress. Yes please!
• Document. Internal documentation can be priceless, especially if you're flying solo.
• Inform your co-workers. Most people only hear from the sysadmins during maintenance or when stuff breaks. It will make them feel more involved in the infrastructure and may provide you with valuable suggestions and of course make them aware that you're doing something valuable with your time.
• Proactive day! If at all possible, try to get parts of your work week dedicated to improvement work with as little interruptions as possible.

And finally I'll address the "grumpy sysadmin" comment. Imagine a developer, coding that also has to deal with live-support at the same time. It is distracting, to say the least. Does not mean that the person hates to do support in any way. I know myself that I can be a little grumpy if I am in the middle of something.

As a footnote; this post is not meant to be a criticism of any of my former employers. Simply my reflections on a job that during my years of studying I am starting to miss. Who knows, I might return the the wonderful world of IT .