Ask HN: Tips on Sysadmin Job

I would add 15 start keeping a physical log book to document changes.

Dependant on what you have to look after you might want more than one book.

A possible corollary to 2: Don't forget to document incidents as you go. You'll learn a lot in these situations and you may find resources that are handy / work for you along the way.

Keep a text file, or OneNote or whatever, open while working an incident. Don't overthink it, don't over-complicate it.

Understand and document what you are responsible for including storage,hosts,networking.

Document the dependancies of apps on the above.

Verify backups and that they are backing up the right information and that they are immutable until their lifecycle is complete.

Verify your critical infrastructure has two power sources. Most equipment have two power supplies and I make sure they are independently powered. (UPS and line/generator). Do not rely on just UPS because it will fail you.

Make sure your datacenter has redundant A/C. Cooling failure will kill you as certainly as power failure just more slowly.

Know your facilities contacts especially the after hours emergency numbers and make sure they are current.

Know your IT support contacts. Sysadmins are somewhat jack of all trades master of none. Call the masters and use them when needed. No shame at all in that.

Don’t be a dick. Relationships are important.

Above that go out of your way help people even if it’s not in your wheelhouse.

Be aware of your long term stress level and well being. Your responsibility is to your people and you can’t do that effectively if your are not mentally able.

Communicate with your boss and make sure you are getting the support and tools you need to do your job. If you need it ask for it.

KISS - Don’t be sucked into complexity where it’s not warranted. Simpler is more reliable than complex if you don’t understand the complex.

Don’t automate unless you completely understand the process you are automating and all the dependancies.

Don’t offhand just trust vendors or their promises. Verify.

Pay extra for good hardware.

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In no particular order.

My 32-years of experience suggests:

1. Don't do anything that you cannot undo. Like, copy the /etc/passwd before running vi on it. Or yelling at a user. Or upgrading software or operating system -- have backups.

2. Have the trust and authority of your manager. This needs to be negotiated in advance. Warn management of your steep learning curve and warn them to expect outages. Ensure you can tell users to wait because you have a priority list established with your manager. Remind users, if necessary, that they are not your manager.

3. Make a note, even if just by counting, every user request. For 100 users you might expect 50 to 200 requests per month. Be sure management sees this report. It is evidence to support additional hiring.

4. Learn customer service skills. Be able to stay completely calm in the face of the CEO screaming in your face. This requires a lot of "emotional IQ" and probably training and coaching. If you can achieve this level of zen-consciousness just 80% of the time you win.

All the other advice posted here also applies. The trick is to adapt the advice to the situation you face, and, when you make a mistake, quickly reverse course.

Good luck!

Be extremely aware that you may have picked up lingo and thought patterns in infosec that mean different things and act differently in your new position. Threats now no longer just mean "russian hacker guy", it also means "Tracy from accounts managed to pour her probiotic smoothie over the laptop's keyboard, and that machine has the only copy of this months employees compensation, they need the file in two hours, or noone's getting paid! If it fails, we'll tell them it's the sysadmin's fault", and "Why is it suddenly 70 degrees celsius and rising in the server room?".