
Happy Sysadmin Day - ashitlerferad
http://sysadminday.com/
======
arca_vorago
The holiday that everyone forgets but the one they shouldn't...

Here's a toast to all the sysadmins, modern day Renaissance-people who keep
the spice flowing from the shadows, often thanklessly.

Coming soon:the sysadmin revolt.

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vwal
To be replaced by the "DevOps Engineer Day". Somehow it doesn't quite sound
the same...

~~~
lsc
DevOps is... a different thing from systems administration. It's a different
role. DevOps is all about quickly getting code into production, while systems
administration is the opposite; systems administration is all about keeping
the code that is in production now working. Sure, both will push new releases;
but if the new release breaks something, a SysAdmin will have a well-tested
rollback plan and use it. The DevOps will roll forward a fix. (This attitude
is obvious in how puppet, a DevOps tool if I ever saw one, works.)

If you read any of the DevOps documentation, they talk about this, about how
SysAdmins stand in the way of progress and upgrades and change in general. And
most SysAdmins agree; making sure that systems that work don't change without
good reason is central to the SysAdmin role, and brings it into conflict with
the DevOps role.

Personally, I think that SysAdmin roles have a better chance of surviving a
downturn than DevOps roles (though the latter certainly become more numerous
when we are in the pleasant part of the business cycle.)

Usually you see SysAdmins at places with important legacy code, where the
biggest danger is that something that works now will break, and DevOps at
places where moving fast is important; where if you don't roll out the new
thing you will die anyhow, so maintaining what you've got isn't as important.
SRE is the role, usually, when those companies actually get big and start
making money, but still maintain their code.

The SRE role is interesting because it has both the UNIX and network
fundamentals, the "don't break what is there" (and the fix what is there,
usually by means other than a re-deploy) roles that the SysAdmin has, as well
as the automation roles that the DevOps has.

If we're splitting things out by how they interview, in DevOps interviews,
they usually care deeply about which configuration management tools you have
used in the past, and the programming questions are often object or design-
pattern related. The networking questions are also very high level, usually;
about higher level protocols. Often they make you demonstrate that you can use
APIs and the libraries used to interface with same, and parsing the http
response with regexes doesn't count. There is usually little focus on UNIX or
networking fundamentals, though you may be required to have some. I have been
asked questions about design patterns at DevOps interviews. (I have recently
started going through the 'gang of four' design pattern book, and I'm finding
that almost everything I didn't understand about object oriented programming
was actually just me not knowing design patterns.)

SysAdmin interviews are the opposite. You may be required to have touched some
kind of configuration management system and have some ideas about the higher
level protocols, but mostly it's about your understanding of UNIX and
networking fundamentals. You get lots of points if you can operate a http api
without using a library, few points for operating the same api using the
library you usually use. Knowing how to use strace is a requirement and
knowing how to use a debugger and read a backtrace is more important than any
amount of design patterns for a sysadmin job. The programming problems they
give you, though, at a sysadmin job, are usually way easier than the
programming problems at a DevOps job (and you can impress people with C at a
sysadmin interview.)

SRE interviews are both, and generally have a higher programming bar than
both, and generally only exist at large and profitable companies. Companies
large enough to hire SRE generally don't use off the shelf configuration
management systems outside of corp (which is a different sort of thing again.)
but you are going to have to describe configuration management concepts if you
want that SRE job.

But saying that SysAdmin and DevOps are the same role or somehow doing the
same thing is one of those things where people who identify as either one will
feel insulted.

~~~
jftuga
> Usually you see SysAdmins ... but still maintain their code.

Very well stated. I work in health care as a sys admin. In our environment,
stability and reliability are paramount.

------
robinj6
:tada:

------
nodesocket
Fellow long beards unite!

------
tjr225
Cheers

