Today is not just Friday, but the last Friday of July, which means that in the late afternoon, small groups in subnet masks with patch cord whips and cats under their arms will rush to pester citizens with questions: “Did you write on Powershell?”, “And you did you pull the optics? and shout "For the LAN!". But this is in a parallel universe, and on planet Earth, guys around the world will quietly open a beer or lemonade, whisper to the server “Don’t fall, bro” and ... continue to work. Because without them, data centers, server rooms, business clusters, computer networks, the Internet, IP-telephony and your 1C will not work. Nothing will happen without them. System administrators, it's all about you! And this post is for you too.
We shake your hand, sysadmins!
On Habré, holivars about the fate of the system administrator in the 2020st century have already been repeatedly started. Users discussed whether it is worth going to system administrators, whether the profession has a future, whether cloud technologies have killed system administrators, whether there is a point in an administrator outside the DevOps paradigm. It was beautiful, pompous, sometimes convincing. Until March 1. The companies sat down at home and the realization suddenly came: a good system administrator is the key not only to the comfortable existence of the company, but the guarantor of a quick transformation into a home office. All over the world, and, of course, in Russia, the golden hands and heads of admins set up VPNs, routed channels to users, set up workplaces (sometimes right by driving through the homes of colleagues!), Set up call forwarding on virtual and iron PBXs, connected printers and tinkered with XNUMXC on kitchens of accountants. And then these guys monitored the IT infrastructure of the new distributed team and rushed to the office to set up and pick up the fallen, writing out a pass and regardless of the risk of infection. These are not doctors, not couriers, not shop assistants - they do not erect monuments and do not draw graffiti, and even, in general, they do not pay a bonus for "you do your job." And they did great. Therefore, we begin our holiday post with gratitude to all these guys and girls! You are strength.
Just a user through the eyes of an admin
And now you can relax
We asked our system administrators to tell stories about how they got into the profession: funny, nostalgic, somewhere even a little tragic. We are happy to share them with you and at the same time comment a little on them. Let's learn from the experience of others.
Gennady
I have always been interested in engineering and computers and wanted to connect my life with it, there was something magical and magical in computing.
While still a schoolboy, I read bash.org: I was very hooked by stories about cats, a shredder, and all this romance of the bashorg of the 2000s. I often imagined myself in the admin chair, who set everything up and now spits at the ceiling.
Over the years, of course, I realized that this is the wrong approach, the right one is in constant movement, development, optimization, understanding where the business is going and what contribution I can make. We must set ourselves goals and move towards them, otherwise it is difficult to be happy - this is how human psychology works.
Even at school, I passionately wanted to have a computer and I got it in the 10th grade.
The story of the appearance of my first PC is tragic: I had a friend with whom we often hung out, he had a computer, and in addition, mental problems. As a result, he ended his life in a loop, he was 15 years old. Then his parents gave his computer to me.
First of all, I reinstalled Windows, and then disappeared in games. The Internet was already connected (my mother brought a laptop from work) and I stole cars in GTA San Andreas from morning to night.
At the same time, I began to learn basic admin things: I had problems like fixing my computer (and I had to deal with its device), the software part, and sometimes repairing their friends' computers. I studied tools, software, how everything works and is arranged.
In 98, a relative gave me a book on computer science by Vladislav Tadeushevich. It was already outdated for those times, but I really enjoyed reading about DOS, the video adapter device, storage systems and information storage devices.
Website of Polyakovsky Vladislav Tadeushevich - the author of the book about DOSWhen I entered the university, the teachers began to recommend books and I got more fundamental knowledge.
I have never been particularly interested in programming and, unlike most developers, I was not drawn to create something of my own. I was interested in computers as a tool.
I first started receiving money for administration when I was 18 years old: friends helped me advertise in the newspaper that I fix and set up computers. It turned out that he was a so-so entrepreneur: he spent more on trips than he earned.
At 22, I got a job in a pension fund: I fixed printers for accountants, set up software, and I had a large field for experimentation. There I touched FreeBSD for the first time, set up file storages, met with 1C.
I had a lot of freedom thanks to the branch management system and worked there for 5 years. When stagnation and stability appeared, I decided to leave from there to an outsourcing company in order to develop further, and after working there for a year, I left for RUVDS.
While working here, the fastest time I grew was the first time. What I like most about my current place of work is the corporate culture: the office, the opportunity to sometimes work from home, good management.
There is freedom in terms of development - you can offer your own solutions, come up with something, get additional income for it. This is not enough for many companies in Russia, especially when it comes to the work of a system administrator not in IT companies.
Then I plan to improve my skills, adapt them to more modern technologies and work further with more modern fault-tolerant systems.
▍Real sysadmin rules
- Keep evolving: learn new technologies, pay attention to advanced tools and automation. This approach will help you to continuously grow as a specialist and always remain a valuable specialist in the labor market.
- Don't be afraid of technology: if you're a Unix admin, tinker with Windows; try using scripts in your work; work with a variety of tools, expand your product skills. This will optimize the work and build the most profitable administration system.
- Always study: in high school, after high school, at work. Continuous training and self-training does not allow the brain to dry out, facilitates work and makes a professional resistant to any crisis.
Alexey
I did not have a specific desire to become an administrator, it happened by itself: I was fond of hardware, computers, then I went to study as a programmer.
At the age of 15, my parents bought me a long-awaited computer and I began to poke around in it. At least once a week I reinstalled Windows; then he began to upgrade the hardware in this computer, saving pocket money for it. Classmates constantly discussed who had what kind of "weak" hardware in the PC: I saved up from pocket money and, as a result, in two years I upgraded the stuffing of the first computer so much that only the case remained from the original configuration of the poor fellow.
I still keep it as a memory from 2005. I remember the Sunrise store in Moscow next to the Savelovsky market - I bought pieces of iron there.
Probably the funniest thing in my story is that I studied as a programmer at the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University. I studied at the parochial school at the Church of the Saints in Krasnoye Selo - my mother insisted, and I went to school every day by metro.I was not particularly eager to go to this particular institute, but in the year when I graduated, the university decided to make an experiment and launched a technical department. The teachers were called from Moscow State University, Baumanka, MIIT - a cool teaching staff gathered and I went to study there and graduated with a degree in mathematics-programmer / software and systems administration.
My first job was still at the university: I worked as a laboratory assistant and serviced computers at the institute. In my third year, my mother's friend got me a job as an administrator's assistant, where I maintained a fleet of computers and sometimes received development tasks.
I got a qualitative leap as a system administrator at my second job in Pushkin, at the Russian Center for Forest Protection. They have 43 branches across the country. There were projects in which I learned a lot that I can now - it was very interesting for me, so I learned quickly.
If we talk about the brightest moments in working in RUVDS, then most of all I remember the fails in the data center, after which I have to repair networks all night. At first, it was a mad adrenaline rush, euphoria from success, when everyone raised or a new task was met and its solution was found.
But when you get used to it, from the 50th time everything happens faster and without such emotional slides.
▍Real sysadmin rules
- Today, system administration is a highly demanded and extremely wide field of activity: you can work on outsourcing, in IT and non-IT companies, in different industries. The wider your professional outlook, the deeper your experience will be, the more unique the tasks you solve.
- Learn to control your emotions: you won't get far on adrenaline. The main thing in the work of a system administrator is logic, system engineering thinking, understanding the interconnectedness of all elements of the IT infrastructure.
- Do not be afraid of errors, bugs, crashes, fails and so on. - it is thanks to them that you become a cool professional. The main thing is to act quickly and clearly according to the scheme: problem detection → analysis of possible causes → clarification of the details of the accident → selection of tools and strategies for resolving the problem → work with the incident → analysis of the results and testing of the new state of the system. At the same time, you need to think almost faster than reading this diagram, especially if you work on loaded services (SLA is no joke to you).
Konstantin
The first computer was bought for me at school, it seems that it was a gift from my parents for good behavior. I started to bother with Windows, up to 20 reinstallations a day. I severely experimented with the system: it was just interesting to change something, tweak, hack, tweak. My actions were not always correct and Windows often died: this is how I studied Windows.It was the 98th year, the days of dial-up modems, gnashing and beeping telephone lines, Russia Online and MTU Intel worked. I had a friend who brought free trial cards for three days and we used these stupid cards.
One day I decided to go beyond free cards and tried to scan ports. I was blocked, I bought a new card, tried again. I was blocked again, and the money in the account too.
For a 15-year-old me, this was a serious amount and I went to the office of Russia.Online. There they tell me “do you know that you broke the law and were engaged in hacking?”. I had to turn on the fool and buy several cards at once. I excused myself that I just had an infected computer and I had nothing to do with it. I was lucky that I was small - I was young and they believed me.
I had friends in the yard and we all bought computers at about the same time. We constantly discussed them and decided to make a grid: we broke the locks on the roof and extended the VMC network. It's the nastiest network that ever existed: it connects computers in series, without a switch, but it was cool in those days. The children who themselves stretched the wires, crimped them, it was great.
I was lucky, I was in the middle of this sequence, and the extreme ones were sometimes shocked. One guy liked to warm his feet on the radiator, and when he touched the crimped wire with his other foot, he cracked with current. After a couple of three years after pulling this network, we switched to twisted pair and the modern Ethernet standard. The speed was only 10 Mbps, but at that time it was good and we could play games on our local network.
We loved to play online games: played Ultima Online, it used to be very popular and became the ancestor of MMORPG. Then I started programming bots for her.
After the bots, I became interested in making my own server for the game. At that time I was already in the 10th grade and worked in a computer club. Not to say that it was an admin job: you sit and turn on the time. But sometimes there were troubles with the computers in the club, I repaired and set them up.I worked there for quite a long time, and then repaired watches for 4-5 years and managed to become a professional watchmaker.
Then he went as an installer to Infoline: a company that provided broadband Internet to city apartments. I ran wires, connected the Internet, and after a while I was promoted to engineer, I diagnosed network equipment and changed it if necessary. Then the stupid boss came and I decided to leave.
I got my first official job as a sysadmin at a company that provided ADSL internet. There I got acquainted with Linux and network equipment. Once I made a website for an auto parts store and there I got acquainted with VMWare virtualization, I had Windows and Linux servers and I grew up quite well on these tasks.
During my work in these companies, I have accumulated a large customer base: they called from the old memory and asked either to connect the Internet, or set up Windows or install an antivirus. The work is boring - you come, you press a button and you sit and wait - some part of the work of a system administrator helps to pump patience.
At some point, I got tired of setting prices and, out of sports interest, decided to update my resume and look for a job. Employers started calling me, the headhunter from RUVDS sent me a test task and gave it a week: I had to make several scripts, find a parameter in the config and change it. I made it in literally 2-3 hours and sent it off: everyone was very surprised. HeadHunter immediately brought me to Victor, I went for an interview, passed a couple more tests and I decided to stay.
Working with a large number of servers and a high load is much more interesting than helping private traders.
▍Real sysadmin rules
- A good system administrator will never be left without work: you can go into big business, you can serve companies as part of the staff of an outsourcing company, you can work as a self-employed specialist and “lead” your own companies that will pray for you. The main thing is to always treat your work with maximum responsibility, because the stability of entire companies depends on your work.
- The profession of a system administrator can become more complicated and transform, but as they say, “this music will play forever”: the more IoT, AI and VR there are in the world, the higher the demand for good system administrators. They are needed in banks, on stock exchanges, in training centers and data centers, in scientific organizations and in the defense industry, in medicine and in construction. It is difficult to think of an industry where information technology has not yet arrived. And where they are, there must be a system administrator. Do not be afraid to choose this profession - it is much wider than setting up a network of 5 printers and 23 PCs in an office. Dare!
Sergei
I became an admin by accident when I worked as a manager in a trading company: it was a wild business of the late 90s, early 2000s, we sold everything, including products. Our department was in charge of logistics. Then the Internet was just beginning to appear, in principle, we needed a regular office server to communicate with the head office, with a file sharing service and a VPN. I set it up and I really liked it.When I left there, I bought the book "Computer Networks" by Olifer and Olifer. I had many paper books on administration, but this was the only one I read. The rest were too unreadable.
The knowledge from this book helped me get into the technical support of a large company and a year later I became an administrator in it. Because of the reshuffles within the company, then all the admins were fired, I was left alone and some guy. He knew about telephony, and I about networks. So he became a telephone operator, and I became an administrator. Both of us were not very skillful then, but gradually figured everything out.My first computer was a ZX Spectrum back in the shaggy nineties. These were a computer in which the processor and all the stuffing was built right into the keyboard, and instead of a monitor, you could use a regular TV. It was not the original, but something assembled on the knee.
Hello for oldfags: what the coveted original Spectrum looked likeMy parents bought a computer that I wanted for a very long time. Mostly I played with toys and wrote something in BASIC. Then came the dandy and Spectrum were abandoned. The first real PS in my personal use appeared when I began to deal with administration.
Why didn't you become a programmer? At that time, it was difficult to become a programmer without a specialized education, I studied for radio-electronic devices and devices: the development of radio-electronic equipment, electronics, analog amplifiers.
Then they thought more in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy. But then no one trained admins, it was even possible to get a position by self-taught. The technologies were completely new, no one knew how to set them up: the admin was the one who learned how to stretch the network and who knew how to crimp the wire.
I needed a job and the first thing I found was related to support - and there I already grew into a system administrator. So it just kind of happened.
I got into RUVDS through an ad: I had two resumes, a system administrator and a React developer. I came for an interview and decided to stay: against the background of previous managers who did not understand anything about technology and even the questions they asked, it was comfortable and good here. Normal guys, normal questions. Soon I'm going to quit administration and move into development, since the company allows it.
▍Real sysadmin rules
- If you are interested in development and programming, do not stop, try. A system administrator deeply understands the work of hardware and networks, which is why he makes an excellent tester and an excellent programmer. It is this complexity of thinking and skills that can take you from sysadmin to DevOps and, most importantly and temptingly, to DevSecOps and information security. And it is interesting and monetary. Work for the future and make friends with good, high-quality books.
Anonymous history of fakap
I worked for a software company that sold (and still sells) all over the world. As for any B2C market, the main thing was the speed of development and the frequency of new releases with features and new interfaces. The company is small and very democratic: if you want to stay on VKontakte, if you want to read Habr, only submit quality work on time. Everything was fine until ... May 2016. At the end of May, continuous problems began: the release was overdue, the new interface was stuck in the bowels of the design department, salespeople howled that they had been left without updates. It seemed that in our country, as in Hottabych, the whole team fell ill with measles and is now out of service. Nothing helped: neither the appeal of the general, nor the meeting. Work magically rose. And, I must say, I am categorically not a gamer - one of those who prefer to code a pet project or solder some kind of game on an arduino. What I did at work in my spare time. And if I were a gamer, I would have known that on May 13, 2016, on this damn date, a new Doom was released. In which the whole office was cut! When I scanned the working network, I turned gray - in the truest sense of the word. How was it to tell the boss about this? How without the resource of the boss to besiege and return to work 17 people?! In general, he demolished everything that was possible from everyone and held preventive conversations one at a time. It was unpleasant, but I was aware of my professional failure and even more aware that there is no company whose team can be 100% trusted. The boss didn’t find out about anything, my colleagues buzzed and stopped, I set up monitoring with alerts, and soon moved on to development, and then to DevOps. The story is epic and sometimes humorous, but the sediment remained - both from myself and from colleagues.
▍Real sysadmin rules
- Working with users is the most annoying thing in the job of a system administrator. They are divided into three clear groups: those who respect the system administrator and are ready to help and treat workstations with care; who pretends to be a great friend and asks for privileges and indulgences for this business; who considers system administrators servants and "call boys." And you need to work with everyone. Therefore, just set boundaries and indicate that your job is: creating a well-functioning IT infrastructure, network and information security, supporting services (including cloud ones!), solving user technical problems, ensuring license purity and compatibility of the software zoo, working with equipment and peripherals. But cleaning, ordering food and water, repairing office chairs, coffee machines, an accountant’s bike, a salesman’s car, clearing blockages, replacing faucets, programming, warehouse and fleet management, minor repairs of smartphones and tablets, photo processing and support for corporate balloons with memes in responsibilities sysadmin are not included! Yes, it boiled up - and, I think, for many it is so.
Okay, okay, we're done with moralizing and proceed to the most pleasant.
Congratulations to all on the day of the system administrator!
Guys and girls, let your users be cats, servers don’t fail, providers don’t cheat, tools will be effective, monitoring will be efficient and reliable, managers will be adequate. Easy tasks for you, clear and solvable incidents, elegant approaches to work and more Linux mood.
In general, so that the ping goes and the money is
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Tell us in the comments what the administration brought you? We will give the authors of the most interesting answers an old system unit as a gift)
Source: habr.com