Modern System Administration

Preface

When I started my first system administrator job, my mentors told me I needed to read the Red Book (aka the second edition of UNIX System Administration Handbook by Evi Nemeth et al. [Addison-Wesley]) and attend USENIX LISA (the first conference dedicated to system administration and targeting large-scale sites—which back then meant serving more than one hundred users). Those mentors were right; I learned so much from both experiences. Reading the Red Book gave me a solid grounding on specific hardware and Unix services. It was much more valuable than any available manuals because of its authors’ collective, practical wisdom. At my first USENIX LISA, I learned from tutorials about the importance of continuous learning (Evi Nemeth’s “Hot Topics in System Administration” tutorials) and documentation techniques (Mike Ciavarella’s Documentation Techniques for SysAdmins). I met countless other sysadmins at informal gatherings and information-sharing sessions, like the Birds of a Feather (BOF) and hallway tracks.

Beyond all of the specific skills or technologies, I learned the following:

• System administration work is often interdisciplinary, requiring collaboration across different types of teams.

• Random knowledge can turn out to be unexpectedly useful.

• Stories are crucial to how we learn and teach (which is how those random pieces of knowledge are sticky enough for use).

I still felt like there was a gap, a distance for me between system administration as described ...