Everything Sysadmin

How important is system administration?

It is trite to say that society is more than ever dependent on technology.

But consider this...

I work in New York City. Experts claim NYC has a 3-day food supply. That is, if all the bridges and tunnels were closed on Monday, 8 million people would be without food by Wednesday night. Scary, right?

The food that comes to NYC is brought by trucks that are scheduled using big IT systems that manage logistics. In fact, from the farm to the table, logistics and supply chain technology is required at the huge scale we do things now a days.

While NYC might be an extreme case, the same technology-dependent food system is probably what you rely on too.

This dependency is true for the delivery of nearly all services: healthcare, governance, media, security and defense.

If you want to make the world a better place, if you want to "save the world", wouldn't it be impactful to make all of those services run more efficiently? Scaled ahead of demand? Detected problems, routed around them automatically, and repaired them quickly?

That's what system administrators do.

We don't do it alone. System administration is a team sport. We are the pivot point between customers of technology and people. As "technician brokers we often find ourselves with "responsibility without authority"". Our work is highly collaborative even though the tools we use come from vendors that assume we work alone.

Our work is risky and stressful. I don't think non-sysadmins realize how risky and how stressful it is.

Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day. I feel a little weird celebrating a day that we created to ask for appreciation. Secretaries didn't invent Secretary's Day (thought I think Hallmark did). On the other hand, I do firmly believe that it is important for sysadmins to create their own positive visibility. When we do our job well we are invisible. When you have a job like that, you need to do your own PR.

And with a job as important as system administration, we should be doing that every day.

Tom Limoncelli

P.S. I'll be doing my Time Management training (and other classes too!) a lot in the next 6 months: August (Tasmania, SAGE-AU), November (Los Angles, MacTechConf), November (San Jose, Usenix LISA), January (San Francisco, TBD). I hope to be at the Sept meeting of my local sysadmin users group LOPSA-NJ.

NYC-area Sysadmins: free beer!

Matt at the Standalone-Sysadmin Blog announced that Etsy has offered to buy the first $x of beer at the NYC Sysadmin Appreciation Day event on Friday (tomorrow). "x" is a lot. We need your help to drink it all.

At last year's event a number of people told me they wished they had brought copies of my books so they could get autographs. I'll be bringing a pen this year to help facilitate this. Please get to me before too much beer

More info about the event in NYC here: http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com

Certification? Not yet.

At PICC I may have sounded like I thought there was an urgent need to create a sysadmin certification program. While I did talk about what I thought it would/could/should look like, I don't think this is a good time to create such a thing. A long-winded version of this paragraph is below.

An open letter:

I wish to clarify a statement I made at the PICC conference and point those of us that think about the future of system administration in a particular direction.

It has become apparent to me that a certification program cannot exist until the educational standards that it measures are generally accepted. That is, a certification should measure conformance to an pre-existing educational standard.

At the PICC conference, part of my keynote made the case for another attempt at creating a certification for system administrators. In the last few months I've thought a lot about the issue of certification. I've also had the chance to talk with with people that are familiar with how the AMA created its certifications for doctors. While I was not advocating for the immediate creation of a certification program, I may have given that impression. Let me be clear that I do not think that the industry has reached sufficient maturity to warrant a certification program as I described. The AMA's now pervasive certification program came after they worked with universities to develop curricula and other educational programs.

It would be prudent to focus on creating educational standards for the profession of system administration. We, the wider professional system administration community, need to work with academic institutions to create curriculum standards for system administration programs. While there have been attempts in the past, I do not feel this has gotten traction because the profession is not taken seriously in academia. This is changing. A number of factors are leading academia to take notice of the importance of operational excellence in IT. I would be glad to discuss strategy and opportunities with interested parties.

Every movement needs to be, at its heart, an attempt to save the world. It is trite to say that society is more and more dependent on computers. Yet our dependence is staggering even to me. From the logistics of getting food from farms to tables, to providing services related to healthcare, governance, media, security and defense; all of these things are reliant on IT such that they can no longer exists without it. And yet I feel that the digitization of society is still in its earliest of stages.

What could be more a more important way to save the world than making sure that society's underlying IT infrastructures are professionally designed, maintained, secured, and operated? We can not leave these things to amateurs and hobbyists, nor bureaucrats and lobbyists.

Sincerely, Thomas Limoncelli

I'll be speaking at MacTech conference, Nov 3-5, 2010

I don't have a lot of time to post today, so this will be short.

New Jersey's first hackspace officially opens!

Sadly I can't attend this because I have plans already, but I'm really excited that my home state is opening a hackspace!

Info about the kickoff party:

Where: 403 Cleveland Ave, Highland Park, NJ When: June 5th 1pm-6pm

New Jersey's Only Hackerspace finally has....well.....a space! Stop by our new location, check out what we're working on, find out what FUBAR Labs is all about. We will be demonstrating our 3D printer, and showcasing member projects. Drop in any time between 1pm and 6pm.

Following the Open house will be our move in Celebration at 8pm. We've finally moved in to our new location! Come help us celebrate. Enjoy drinks served by our bartending robot and request your favorite songs from our artificially intelligent DJ. Suggested donation is $10

--
http://fubarlabs.com/

I wish this project great success! It sounds awesome!

Announcing the 2010 SysAdmin of the Year Awards

Nominations are being collected for the 2010 SysAdmin of the Year Award. This year the primary sponsor is OpenDNS.

Yes, you can self-nominate.

This year there are individual categories:

• Best Disaster Response Award
• Neat Freak Award
• Shoestring Budget Award
• Flying Solo Award
• Large-Scale Deployment Award
• DevOps Award

"Winners in each category will receive a prize of $50, and from all entries the judging committee will choose one winner that stands out among the rest as the official OpenDNS SysAdmin of the Year."

Read more about it here.

PLUG (Philly Linux Users Group) talk on Emacs Org-Mode tonight!

Emacs can do everything, it can even manage your todo list. Org-Mode is "for keeping notes, maintaining ToDo lists, doing project planning, and authoring with a fast and effective plain-text system."

I have seen demos of Org-Mode and was very impressed by it. It certainly has all the features needed for doing The Cycle, the system I recommend in Time Management for System Administrators

If you are in the Philadelphia area, tonight PLUG presents Paul Snyder speaking on Org-Mode. Check it out!

Thanks for a great conference!

LOPSA PICC 2010 was a big success. Thanks to everyone that attended.

LOPSA Conference schedule published!

If you were waiting to register until the complete schedule was revealed, get that credit card out!

LOPSA PICC last night published the final slate of papers and speakers (if you didn't get your accept/sorry email, please let us know). http://picconf.org now contains the complete schedule.

You can attend for as little as $249, or $99 for students. The training program is extra.

If you aren't sure how to ask your boss for permission, we have some advice.

Tom

Tonight's LOPSA-NJ Chapter meeting

Tonight's topic is "What's the biggest problem in system administration?" 

LOPSA Regional Sysadmin conference announced!

Registration is open! Keynotes announced! Register today!

NJ/NY/PA/DE/CT/RI/MA Regional Sysadmin Conference

I've mentioned the Professional IT Community Conference (PICC) before, but now the fun has really started.

Registration is open and the speakers have been announced!

The cost is low, and the benefits are huge. I know from Google Analytics that this site receives hits from over 500 unique users in the region of this conference, every month. We don't have that kind of space at the conference. It's going to sell out at some point, so make sure that you talk to your boss now about attending. We've even drafted a letter to help convince them that it's worth your time and their money.

It isn't often that you get a local conference with internationally known speakers like David Blank-Edelman (O'Reilly's "Automating System Administration with Perl") as well as Eben M Haber from the IBM research lab in Almaden, CA! This conference is going to get you the biggest bang for your buck out there.

(Oh, and I'll be speaking too. I've reworked 2 of my half-day tutorials ("Time Management" and "Help! Everyone hates our IT department!") plus, I've been asked to give the Saturday morning keynote, which I'll be using to premiere material from my yet-unannounced new book! But the book is a secret still, so hush!)

What I'd like you to do is to help me get the word out. Please. Not everyone reading this is in the NJ/NY/PA/CT/DE/RI/MA area. For those of you who aren't, please tell other people. Follow us on twitter at @picconf, email the site (http://www.picconf.org) to anyone you know in the area who might be interested, tell user groups about it, heck, we've even got a facebook page that you can become a fan of.

This is absolutely a grass-roots kind of effort. We have a very small advertising budget, so I want to use that as intelligently as possible. That means getting your help for the initial waves, and to spread it by word of mouth, by email, link, tweet, IM, and whatever else you've got.

A very big thank you to every one of you out there who reads this blog and supports me. I appreciate all of you.

New Jersey Sysadmin conference announced!

New Jersey (and nearby) sysadmins, network engineers, DBAs, and anyone that considers themselves part of the "IT industry" should check out the LOPSA New Jersey Professional IT Community Conference.

The conference will be Fri/Sat, May 7-8, 2010 in sunny New Brunswick, NJ. I'll be speaking both days.

LOPSA-NJ is excited to announce a conference for the IT and system administration community in New Jersey and surrounding area!

Two days of speakers, panels, training, and "unconference". For technical people, by technical people.

LOPSA-New Jersey Professional IT Community Conference (PICC) Fri/Sat May 7-8, 2010, Hyatt Regency, in sunny New Brunswick, NJ.

http://www.picconf.org

The long version:

PICC10 is a gathering of professionals from the diverse IT (computer and network administration) community in New Jersey to learn, share ideas, and network. The conference includes invited speakers and keynotes, training by top-notch experts that is relevant, useful, and recession-friendly; plus an "unconference" track where attendees propose and host their own topics during the event. We expect attendance of 100 to 150 IT professionals from mid- to large-sized companies and academia from New Jersey/New York/Pennsylvania. We go by many titles but everyone is invited: system administrators, network administrators, network engineers, Windows, Linux, Unix, DBAs, and so on. YOU are invited!

Awesome! Keep me informed!

• Twitters: http://www.twitter.com/picconf
• Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/fb-picc
• Emails: http://lopsanj.org/mailman/listinfo/picc2010-announce

Read the full "Call for Participation":

http://lopsanj.org/events/picc10/cfp (Yes, we need you to propose conference topics)

Sponsors needed! Reach a motivated, highly-targeted demographic:

http://lopsanj.org/events/picc10/sponsors

LOPSA is vendor-independant and non-profit. This conference is too.

Survey on professionalism in system administration

I'm doing research about professionalism in our industry. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Please take 5 minutes to answer this simple survey.

Please spread this survey around to your friends, email lists, and twitters. I'll be collecting data for one week.

Thanks!

New Jersey IT Community Conference planning

Save this date: May 7-8, 2010 (Fri/Sat)

My local (New Jersey) LOPSA chapter has decided to have their own local mini-conference. There will be speakers, talks, training and "unconference" tracks. We want to have people there that come from all backgrounds: Windows admins, Linux/Unix sysadmins, network admins, storage gurus, and so on.

Interested? Live and/or work in/near New Jersey? Active in a User Group that would like to be involved?

Want to be involved in planning this conference? It is a great way to meet people and network. Our next planning meeting is Monday night (Dec 14, 7pm). Email me (tal at everything sysadmin dot com) for more info.

Update: Original post listed the date wrong... oops! I'm an idiot.

SysAdvent has begun!

SysAdvent has started its second year.  SysAdvent is a project to count down the 24 days leading to Christmas with a sysadmin tip each day.  Last year Jordan Sissel wrote all 24 days (amazing job, dude!). This year he has enlisted guest bloggers to help out. You might see a post of mine one of these days.

Google Vendor BoF Thursday night

I am MC of the "Google Vendor BoF" at LISA09.

Here's how the planning meeting went:

"Ice cream?"
"Check."
"Raffle prizes?"
"Check."
"Beer?"
"Check."
"Ok, we're ready!"

See you there! Thursday, November 5, 9:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m., Essex A, B, & C.

Conference Planning Tips

[ This is a draft, but it's good enough to publish. Please post feedback. ]

Someone recently asked me for my advice about planning a conference.

First, I want to say that conferences are really important to the open source community. Conferences build community. Conferences build community. Repeat that over and over. It is so true it can't be underestimated. From the early Usenix conferences which bolstered Unix, to MacWorld which gave the Mac developer community "a home", to modern Linux and other conferences: If you want to build a community, have an annual conference. A well-run conference has the side effect of building your local community. First, the conference is great PR for your organization. Every planning meeting is an excuse to tell the world that you exist. Second, a conference is "special" and that brings out people that might normally ignore a monthly meeting. Third, if you do the planning right and spread the work around, you will find volunteers come out of the woodwork. The person that was intimidated to run an entire conference is certainly willing to do a small task like reaching out to a potential speaker or coordinating the catering vendor that provides lunch. That grooms people for bigger jobs. By the end of your conference you will have found the next generation of leadership that your organization needs.

So here's my advice.

A successful conference is created by having a logical plan that will carry you from the start all the way to the end.

1. Work from a timeline. I have run or been involved in about a dozen conferences. The most important thing that I learned was to build a timeline. Do this in person. Get everyone in a room for a kick-off meeting. Put huge sheets of paper on the walls marked with the months or weeks leading up to the conference. Mark 'today' and 'conference' as end-points. Now discuss the various aspects of the conference and mark them on the timeline.

Suppose you start with the program: Mark the day you'll announce the "call for papers", mark when the deadline will be for submissions, mark when the program committee will have their selections done, confirmations will go out, when replies are accepted, and so on. Next let's hear from the registration committee. Mark the last day people can pre-register, mark the last day you offer a discount for early registration (which is a lie. Mark 1 week early, but use that day to announce "the discount is extended 1 week!" and have the real deadline 1 week later). PR is important. How often will you send out press releases? Monthly? Mark the first of each month. Magazines have a 4-month lead time, and people make travel plans 6 months in advance: Mark 10 months early that you will have contacted magazines. Keep doing this with every committee... even if you don't have your committees set up. Most of it will be guesses. That's ok. A lot of it will need to be coordinated: The moment you have the keynote speaker, send a press release. People don't register for a conference until they know the entire (draft) program, so be fore that your have a (draft) program early, and that registration deadlines are coordinated around that. etc. etc. Mark the days of the planning conference calls (once per month, then once per week when you are closer to the event).

If you can get all this into a timeline in a single day-long meeting the rest of the story "just writes itself". Each week/month have a conference call where you figure out who is going to do the tasks in the next week/month of the timeline. It lets volunteers feel like no task is too intimidating (they only look a week/month ahead), and leaders don't micromange because they are setting goals. It keeps everyone "on the same page" and removes a lot of the chaos. (Note: If you want to encourage new volunteers, have the meetings in person and announce them publicly. Newbies are intimidated by phone calls.)

2. End the "timeline meeting" with a commitment. The next thing I recommend also takes place at the "timeline" meeting. At the end of the meeting, gather everyone in a circle and ask them all to commit to making sure the "timeline" happens. Go around the circle and have each person saying that they are agreeing to this commitment. I know it sounds really hippy-dippy, but the conferences that I've done this have been the ones where all the volunteers stayed on to the end. The ones were I chickened out and didn't do this were the ones that everyone was fighting, volunteers dropped out, and by the conference date 1-2 people were doing all the work (and hated it). I call this my "good luck ritual". There is magic in this ritual.

3. Get a signed contract for the location as soon as you can. Most volunteers won't volunteer until the date/place are certain. They don't want to put effort into something that they can't attend.

The few volunteers that you do get before you've booked a place... use them to find and book a place.

Once you've booked a place, have the timeline meeting.

4. One more thing... Here are some things to add to the timeline because they are often forgotten.

• Before the conference starts, write "thank you" notes to all the speakers. (Send them 1 day after the event).
• Send rejection letters AND confirmation letters. Many times conferences forget to send rejection letters. Don't leave people hanging.
• Have the "post-conference" party immediately after the conference is done. Don't wait a day... people won't be around for it. Use the party to thank everyone, give them space to relax and celebrate, and make notes for next year. Rather than a formal "what will we improve next year" meeting, just put a big sheet of paper on the wall and let people write. Have another sheet for people to list "Great things about this year's conference!"

Setting up a timeline early on gives the entire process structure. Structure is comforting to volunteers that may be otherwise unsure and, quite possibly, scared. Scared, confused, people are more likely to be stressed, get into arguments, and drop out. Giving people some structure, but not so much as to be micro-managing them, helps build their confidence, makes sure that everyone understands their job and the jobs of everyone else, and that all helps people work better together.

Have a great conference!

A beautiful idea about Alan Turing

John Graham-Cumming wrote an excellent article about how Alan Turing, father of computer science, deserves an apology.  His explanation blew me away because of the beautiful symmetry (or maybe we should say "recursion") in the unfairness of how Turing was prosecuted when seen through the light of how Turing constructed his famous "Turing Test".

Improving attendance at Linux Users Groups

(Note: this post is not about you.  I swear.)

Someone once asked me what improvements they could make to their Linux Users Group (LUG).  New people came but never returned.

Two things I observed.

1.  New people didn't feel welcome.  Suggestion: Go out of your way to make new people feel welcome.  Have a designated person show up early and just say "hi" to everyone that walks in. (If you are the leader, don't do this yourself.  Delegate. Look around, find the person with the biggest smile, and ask them to do it.  Not all geeks are... how do you say... "camera friendly".)  Most of us are introverts and would be turned off by someone that tries to make small-talk, but just hearing someone say "hi" is great.  Have good signs on the doors so people know where to go.  Nothing makes new people feel unwanted like a lack of being told where your meeting is.  I once went to a meeting (not a LUG, but the issue is the same) only to discover that the web site listed the address, but not the specific room... or which building.  There were no signs telling me where to go.  Ugh.

2.  If you have a Q&A session, the moderator should never answer the questions.  People come to share and everyone wants their turn to show off.  A big mistake I see is that the moderator will answer each question then look around and say, "Does anyone else have anything to add?"  Nobody answers.  Gee, I wonder why.  Well, the moderator just expressed their dominance and anything else would be an affront to the leader.  Folks, this is an open source movement.  We all have power and knowledge and good stuff to day.  If you are the moderator, be the last person to speak. Sure you know the perfect answer, in fact I bet you have 5 points you'd like to make.  However, so do other people in the audience.  Get them to say the answer.  Let a couple people speak.  After 3-4 people speak it is likely that 4 of the 5 points you wanted to make have been made already.  Now you can chime in with your 5th point.  Everyone else got their chance to shine and your 5 points were made.  You'll still look brilliant for having a 5th point that nobody else thought of, but you won't look overbearing.

Those are the top 2 problems I've seen.

The #3 issue is "Where to advertise?"    Please post a comment if you have suggestions.