Modern System Administration

Part I. Reasoning About Systems

The first four chapters share the fundamentals of systems and how to choose between options. It isn’t helpful to talk about solutions in terms of the “best.” Instead, you need to understand what is available and what it’s “best for,” and its context in your system. That context is an evolving set of conflicting goals, people, and the different parts that provide the functioning system. “Systems thinking” encourages you to think about the different parts of the system and how they interact in alignment with your current problems, which leads to a better understanding of the system’s evolution over time.