Careers in

System Administration

Fran Fabrizio

UAB Computer and Information Sciences

Talk Outline

A Day in the Life…

What is a Sysadmin?

What does a sysadmin do on a daily basis?

Other kinds of sysadmins

Does This Sound Interesting?

Benefits of Being a Sysadmin

Compatibility

Traits of Successful Sysadmins

Preparing to Be a Sysadmin

Required Skills

Ideas for College

A Day in the Life…

What is a sysadmin?

What types of things do they do?

The different types of sysadmins

What is a Sysadmin?

Google’s answer to define:sysadmin

This is the person or people that takes care of a UNIX system This person has full access to all system resources.

Employee responsible for a company's computer network, also sometimes called a network administrator. A sysadmin's duties may include configuring the company's firewall, acquiring and installing hardware, setting up email addresses and keeping the printers working.

A job position of engineers involved in computer systems. They are the people responsible for running the system, or running some aspect of it.

What is a Sysadmin?

My informal definition…

“A person who is responsible for creating and

maintaining an IT environment (or some aspect

of it) to support users’ needs.”

How it relates to other areas of IT / CS?

Draw picture

How I Became a Sysadmin(An extremely concise history of my past 14 years)

Left TJ and went to Wash U. wanting to be a doctor

Organic Chemistry happened. I didn’t want to be a doctor any more. I was good with computers, so I tried computer science

I was a programmer for 6 years, first at a local St. Louis company, then at WebMD

I had to find a job in Birmingham. This one was mistakenly listed as a programmer job. I learned otherwise at the interview. They still hired me!

(More practical advice coming later…)

What I Do

Higher Education Sysadmin

Department of Computer and Information

Sciences

University of Alabama at Birmingham

IT staff consists of myself and 3-4 student

workers

Scope

20 faculty and staff

250 students

My organization is responsible for

something like 400-500 systems

~ $1.5 - 2 million in IT

A Brief Tour

Slide Show

The Mythical Typical Day

Each day is completely different from the last

Everchanging activities

reactive, “helpdesk response”

proactive, strategic project development

physical labor

Teaching

Working with vendors

doing the “soft” stuff - administrative, PR, recruitment,

professional development (like this talk)

Job Responsibilities

The entire IT cycle

Research

Vendor negotiations

Procurement

Receiving

Installation

Configuration

Maintenance

Decommission

Job Responsibilities

End User Support

Answering helpdesk requests

Setting up laptops and desktops

Handling department guests

Academic Support

Setting up servers and software for academic activities

Research Support

Maintaining specialized research equipment and services

Infrastructure Support

Core production servers - email, web, etc…

Centralized storage and account management

Network infrastructure

Job Responsibilities

Other activities

Managing the student staff

Maintaining vendor relationships

Coordinating with other areas of campus IT

Public relations - giving tours, attending events, creating department advertising

Grant writing

User training

Job Responsibilities

Even more activities

Producing documentation

Teaching classes, seminars and workshops

Annual budget

Strategic planning

Training and development

Recent Tasks

Provide IT support to Alabama High School Programming Contest including development of program to automate submissions

Install security cameras

Upgrade cluster software

Troubleshoot error conditions on server hardware

Create system for automating subversion access and wikis for new accounts

Wrote a grant proposal for student technology fees

Recent Tasks

Develop system to automate lab machine installs based on location and role

Troubleshoot lost DHCP packets

Prepare workstations for summer research students

Migrate users to new email system

Install interactive monitors and remote lab PC control software and create training docs

Other Types of Sysadmins

Corporate

Network

Database

Security

Domain-Specific

Domain-Specific Admins

Bioinformatics

Computer Forensics

Computational Chemists

High Performance Computing

Most physical sciences have become

extremely computation-oriented. They need

people who understand IT -and- their world.

Does This Sound Interesting?

Debunking some Myths

Benefits of the job

Compatibility

Myths of Sysadmins

They’re in front of a computer all day.

They don’t interact with people much.

They never get to program.

It’s not a very creative job.

Why I Like My Job

Challenging

Hard problems

Never the same day twice

Great if you are easily bored

Always learning something new

IT reinvents itself every few years

Freedom

Autonomy, independence

Why I Like My Job

Academic Environment

Relaxed / casual, respectful, supportive

Feeling of Enabling People

Pay and Benefits

High salaries

Get to travel a lot

Public sector advantages

A Quick Look at the Industry(this slide is for the parents!)

The IT job outlook is phenomenally good

right now

The outsourcing myth - debunked!

Explosion in need - 43% job growth

Job happiness - IT dominates these rankings

Competitive salaries - Top 5 of all degrees.

Start > $50k.

Is Sysadmin Right for Me?

I like to always be doing something different.

I am spontaneous and adapt well to sudden changes and new situations.

I multitask well and don’t mind interruptions.

I don’t fear the unknown.

Is Sysadmin Right for Me?

I welcome challenging problems.

I enjoy installing and debugging computer

hardware and software.

I get along with all sorts of personalities

easily.

I work well under pressure.

I like puzzles.

Is Sysadmin Right for Me?

I’d rather know a little about a lot than a lot

about a little

I don’t mind unpredictable work schedules

and being on call

I like to take things apart and figure out how

they work

Preparing to be a Sysadmin

Required Skills

Traits of Successful Sysadmins

Maximizing College

Required Skills

“Hard” skills

Must be an expert hardware and software tinkerer

Comfortable in multiple Oses

Install and configure server and client software

Know how networks work and how computers communicate

Script programming

Leveraging the Internet for information

One of the biggest mistakes I see young admins make!

Required Skills

Hard Skills Linux, Windows, OS X, Solaris, Perl, PHP, JavaScript, HTML,

XML, CSS, AJAX, Active Directory, SQL, Amanda, TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP, IMAP, POP, SVN, CVS, LDAP, DNS, DHCP, SSH, SFTP, FTP, SSL, Java, Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, PostgreSQL, RRT, Cricket, Nagios, Samba, SMB, BOOTP, IPMI, PXE, Python, sh, bash, csh, MPI, SGE, Globus, Grid, Cluster, CUPS, LPR, DFS, EXT3, Reiser, XFS, JFS, Squid, iptables, IBRIX, Infiniband, Ethernet, DVI, USB, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe, DIMM, CMOS, BIOS, ISO, IIS, Postfix, sendmail, dovecot, courier-imap, scp, df, du, top, uptime, find, tar, tail, less, grep, ls, vi, emacs, ps, man, which, crontab, cp, dump, more, ruby, c, c++, sed, awk, proc, postscript, pdf, latex, drupal, plone, modprobe, regedit, group policy, ping, route……….

The point is, you obviously can’t learn all of these, so focus on getting a good foundation and being able to learn new things quickly.

Required Skills

Soft Skills

Be an excellent communicator

Written

Verbal

Communicating technical information clearly and concisely is extremely hard!

Adaptability

The landscape is constantly changing. Stay ahead of the curve by keeping track of current development, maintaining current training, and trying new things.

Required Skills

Soft Skills

Tolerance, Patience and Compassion

End users can be difficult and unreasonable

Put yourself in their shoes

Self-Motivating

Often, the only time you hear from users is when there’s something wrong. The best ones remember to praise you when things go right, but don’t rely on it for motivation

Creativity

Ability to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions to problems

Successful Sysadmins…

Generalize.

They become a Jack-of-all-Trades. They don’t get

trapped in a specific technology or product.

Are expert problem solvers.

They understand how to attack the unknown in

manageable, measured steps.

Are very good at time management.

They manage information and workflow effectively.

Successful Sysadmins…

Think ahead.

Put monitoring systems in place before the

problem exists. Identify bottlenecks and

weaknesses and address them.

Solve a problem once.

Build a permanent solution, not a one-time hack

job. “Higher Order Administration”

Are often outgoing, social people

How To Prepare

Most college programs don’t do a good job

of preparing people to be sysadmins

Which department? Computer Science?

Computer Engineering? MIS?

My choice, and why

Maximizing College

Opportunities While at college, try to work at student labs and

helpdesk jobs and get IT internships and co-ops.

Good classes to take:

Technical writing

Networking

computer architecture

operating system theory

scripting languages

web applications/services

distributed computing

computer security

The End

Thank you!

Questions?

Contact me at fran@cis.uab.edu