System Admins Should Know How To Code 298
snydeq writes "You don't need to be a programmer, but you'll solve harder problems faster if you can write your own code, writes Paul Venezia. 'The fact is, while we may know several programming languages to varying degrees, most IT ninjas aren't developers, per se. I've put in weeks and months of work on various large coding projects, but that's certainly not how I spend most of my time. Frankly, I don't think I could just write code day in and day out, but when I need to develop a tool to deal with a random problem, I dive right in. ... It's not a vocation, and it's not a clear focus of the job, but it's a substantial weapon when tackling many problems. I'm fairly certain that if all I did was write Perl, I'd go insane.'"
Very true, for many reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:5, Informative)
Depends what they're administering.
There are plenty of systems that are more closed, and the sysadmin should be spending their time living in the pre-provided frameworks, rather than coding their own.
Many times, it's a matter of learning what is already available for the system, rather than coding your own, lesser quality replacement.
Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't or you can't? Because even when I'm not coding, just in day-to-day computer use, I often write scripts to batch-process or automate various things. I have found this highly beneficial. I don't want to break you down, I just want to know your reasoning. Personally, I can highly recommend learning scripting, be it bash/awk/php (yes, I wrote php scripts)/powershell/whatever, I'm sure you'll benefit from it.
Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
2Cents, you are absolutely right. Even in windows systems, a basic understanding of what can be done with code can stop 5 people from running around to a couple hundred machines each.
Should the sysadmin be a programmer? Not in the conventional sense, but they should be able to programmatically attack the problems placed before them before they just brute force their way through them.
Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
I see a lot of admins in very large companies throw labor at a problem as their first course of action. It is typically a face palm moment for me as I often see the problems as fixable in minutes. I believe that all sysadmins should be able to program, but think that making a programmer a sysadmin is generally a bad idea.
Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest, most of my managers have been very nervous about my suggestions to even use tools which I'm knowledgable in because they don't understand the concepts. Ad the bigger the company the more likely they are to want a vendor solution rather than use internal resources.
As a manager, sometimes I see the tool to automate and script changes to be a risk of taking down the network faster than anyone can do anything about it.
Like the time a senior network admin accidentally took down our network by setting the IP address of all of our network switches to the same set of IP address. He tested the script and it worked perfectly on one network closet - then he proceeded to apply the remaining set of IP addresses the the remaining hundred network switches in our organization.
He knew as soon as the first alarm went off what had happened, but by then it was too late to stop it. Fortunately, he had the good sense to not write the config to memory, so recovery just walking to each network closet to power cycle the switches -- much faster than if we had to walk around with a console cable to back out the changes on each switch
That said, he still uses the same tool to push out changes, but he tests his scripts on 2 IDF's before pushing out changes and has the junior network admin double check his work.
But I can see why a manager would be cautious about a new and untested automation tool.
Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:5, Informative)
Experience has told me something about automated batching of config changes which your 'senior' admin should've known as well. This is crucial:
DEPLOY IN (SEQUENTIAL) PHASES. I don't care if you tested it in one situation or 5: if you've got 50 different situations, you need to 'test' it in each of those unless you know those different situations are in fact the same situation. This means a longer deployment, but you need to test ad verify everything, especially something infrastructural. It will take longer, but it's inerrantly necessary.
Not only does it reduce the outage potential, but it allows you to more quickly back out of it. Sure, it's not as lazy as deploying everywhere at once after a couple quick tests, but it's more foolproof than having half a dozen people look at your changes. Yes, having a second set of eyes is important, but its mostly pointless if they don't fully understand what they're looking - that's why they're the junior, after all.
Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:5, Funny)
make a configuration change across, say, 2000 devices (or in our case, several million)
Running a bot net, are ya?
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Citation needed
Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
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some
of mine.
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Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:4, Insightful)
You missed the OP's point. The point isn't that you'll necessarily be coded for the system you have. The point is that knowing how to code provides critical understanding of how a computer operates that a sysadmin needs regardless of whether or not he's actually coding.
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Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The problem is the way corps shit all over IT they'll just go "Hey, one more job we can dump on them without raising their pay!" and that will be that.
Lets face it folks, we are gonna end up with critical shortages of IT and infrastructure workers because between the offshoring, the H1-Bs, and the PHBs treating IT as this money pit that doesn't give them any profits? IT has been shat upon for the good part of the last decade.
I know myself and most of the old guard guys I knew ended up getting out of corporate IT for just this reason, piling more and more work upon us while expecting everything to be done with less help and a shrinking budget...now you want to add coding to the requirements? You gonna add a pay raise and pay for the classes? Yeah, thought not.
You're right, with caveats, which I will get to in a moment.
I'm not entirely sure, but I strongly suspect that this situation you describe will turn around, at least a little. There's been some high profile fails in the news associated with outsourcing, either personnel or relying on cloud services, and as more and more outsourcing is done, I think these fails will get more spectacular and more common. You can already see a few companies swimming against the current. I read I think yesterday that GM is i
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Not to rain on your parade, but the SonicWall's are really just D-Link routers running a re-badged version of Linux (you can even drop to the command line and inspect iptables) while most of the shit Dell and HP churns out is not much better than the TigerDirect special.
I myself buy Netgear's ProSafe stuff for the network because it does the same stuff and has the same capabilities as Cisco etc. but for about 1/10th the price and most of my servers are SuperMicro because the first time I bought a COTS serve
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Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:4, Interesting)
Several years ago I developed a method to resolder the capacitors on a particular motherboard that we HAD to have, but had the caps with the bad electrolyte. (Nothing fancy, but the board has a few issues that made replacement difficult.) The Mark 1 variant was very ugly, but functional and proved the concept, the Mark 2 variant is what we still do today. When looking at the invoice the boss asked me why I was using capacitors that cost over 75 cents each, I simply pointed to the spec sheet and told him that the ones I bought were rated for 8,000 hours at 105C while the ones that were 10 cents each were rated for 1,000 hours at 80C. He immediately understood and saw how my decision was correct. No need to try to explain cost-benefit to some bean counter. No need to write up some fancy report, just point out the specs and he understands that by going with the expensive caps we will never have to re-solder those caps again and saving us gobs of money in the long term.
Hard drives in our recorders? WD Blacks all the way. Greens are so much cheaper, especially during the shortage, but he never even considered telling us to use cheaper drives and the increased cost was easily factored into our budgets. Contrast that with my brother, who works for a national company. When hard drives skyrocketed, getting them to authorize the funds they needed for hard drives was a monumental task and took several weeks of daily emails and phone calls.
There are many inefficiencies in small companies, however there are many inefficiencies as well that give them an advantage. Despite the government giving the large firms heaps of advantages,many small firms can still compete, though many simply leave the country, some better than others, as we have seen over the last couple decades.
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Toilets in a large building are fungible. If one bathroom is out because of a mega-deuce, I can just go to the next one. Computer networks are frequently unique snowflakes tightly bound to the business.
Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:4, Interesting)
I feel like even if you're not going to be doing any hardcore programming, at least having the mindset to be able to reason out the functional blocks that make something in the computer happen is a huge benefit.
If you know that to do X, you need to do something along the lines of A,B, and C, even if you don't know exactly what A, B and C are , or you don't know how to actually implement it, you're still miles ahead of someone who just doesn't get it.
That was my experience in programming classes in college too... some people just got it and could make things work relatively efficiently within the boundaries of their knowledge, but others just had no idea at all and were always so far of the mark that it was almost a waste of time for them to even try anymore.
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Re:Very true, for many reasons. (Score:4, Informative)
I work in a multinational company with an IT department of about 120 people (about 5500 total employees). We have maybe 10 people that write code. Why on earth would anyone labeled as a system administrator have to write code? What am I doing maintaining multiple SANs, ESX farms, MS clusters, Cisco switches, routers, VPN, and firewalls that I should know how to code?
The 10 people have that write code do exactly that. Write code and build applications. I would not expect them to have a working knowledge of setup routing our WAN, they should not expect me to code an application.
Sounds like a multinational corporation :)
I've done everything you are doing, but still occasionally needed to write code. Maybe you have a database and instead of purchasing an expensive license to be able to get clean backups you write a script which puts it in a clean state, connects to the SAN, takes a snapshot of the LUN, mounts that snapshot so you have a clean backup. Maybe you are using SNMP to monitor servers and need to get information on some service (active dhcp leases for example). Maybe you need to periodically clean old files from somewhere that fill certain requirements etc...
Most of these examples can also be solved by throwing money at it, but if I was hiring somebody I'd rather take a person who also has the ability to solve problems with sense and in a hurry. It could be the difference between a team having 5 people to maintain 100 servers or 5 people to maintain 5000 servers.
Coders should know how to admin (Score:4, Insightful)
...and support for that matter.
Corollary: All IT People Should Have to Do It All (Score:5, Insightful)
I've worked in companies ranging from 5 people to 40,000 (and plenty in between). In the smaller shops I've had to do administration, development, desktop, and customer support. In the larger 'enterprise' shops, I'm constantly amused by the myriad breakdowns in communications caused by folks being incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of their coworkers.
Being a developer made me a better system administrator. Being an admin made me a better developer. Same with operations, support, et. al.
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Re:Coders should know how to admin (Score:4, Informative)
It's the mindset that matters (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Next you'll tell me my developers should know how to admin a server and do so at a drop of a hat.
Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, developers trying to write tools for sysadmins usually suck at it, unless they've been a sysadmin at some time in the past. I have used a few products lately which are trying to solve all our sysadmin problems, and the one that doesn't suck comes from a dev who is a former sysadmin. And when I talk to him and make suggestions he sees exactly where I'm coming from.
Developers just want to solve use cases that fit neat little scenarios without any corner cases, and it shows when their tool is so inflexible as to be useless.
Not only admins (Score:5, Informative)
In general, everybody dealing with computers can benefit from a bit of programming knowledge, not only admins. The rule of thumb is: if you're doing a repetitive, braindead job, you're doing it wrong. Computers are built to do exactly that. A small script can automate a lot of work for you, if you have that skill it can help you tremendously.
Re:Not only admins (Score:5, Interesting)
PS: YOu don't really need to know how to program, if you can just identify tasks that are braindead and repetitive, that's already a plus. Then you can go and talk to someone who does know how to program, explain the problem, and this person might come up with a simple solution for you. It all boils down to this [imgur.com].
Unfortunately, many people are not trained to identify automatable jobs.
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It all boils down to this [imgur.com].
That's a great graph. Took me a minute to realize that it was very strange to me to have time on the y axis, since it so rarely appears there - but once I got used to tilting my head at 90 degrees, it worked.. :)
Re:Not only admins (Score:4, Funny)
You're right. But you could always write a script to flip the axes, might come in handy if you encounter similar graphs ;-).
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Not trained? What? Most people I know realize the tasks they do could be automated. However, they do everything in their power to ensure they aren't because they believe it keeps their relatively mindless and easy job "safe". This mindset is prevalent in the public sector and the unionized public sector especially.
I was able to come in and completely revamp a position I was hired to do to expand it to encompass at least 50x more work with a little Access/VBA and some learned-on-the-job DW knowledge.
They are
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I think that these days programming is like being literate. Sure you don't really need to know how to read and write, your secretary can do it for you all day long. It just seems like a big waste of effort to me. For many simple and repetitive things related to their jobs, everyone should be able to whip up a quick script, just like everyone takes notes as needs arise, without calling their secretary on the intercom every time they need to write down a phone number.
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This presumes that people who know how to program are willing to do things for you that they might reasonably expect you to do for yourself.
Indeed. In some companies this might be a problem. If that's the case, it's a mentality problem, not a technical one. Where I worked, increasing productivity has always been appreciated. I believe that's the right attitude.
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In general, everybody dealing with computers can benefit from a bit of programming knowledge, not only admins. The rule of thumb is: if you're doing a repetitive, braindead job, you're doing it wrong. Computers are built to do exactly that. A small script can automate a lot of work for you, if you have that skill it can help you tremendously.
Let me guess, you're a developer? Yes, yes and it'd be great if developers understand a little about sysadmin so they knew how their software would be run... oh and understand the business a little better... oh and understand support and the issues their having.... oh and understand the sales and marketing people who little who has to try to sell this stuff... oh and understand the economists so we actually do things profitable too... and, yeah okay there's a zillion things that would be somewhat useful. I
Re:Not only admins (Score:4, Interesting)
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Personally I don't hate "amateur" programmers coming up with a solution that makes my hair stand up right. I applaud it. If it saves them time, they'll use it. If not, I hope they recycle the bits (especially the 1's, they pollute a lot more than 0's). But seriously, you bring up some important points:
1) Is the effort spent worth the time gained? That's something you should *always* ask yourself. Even for seasoned programmers this is not always a clear-cut case. Personally I found this technique quite usefu
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This is very important. I worked in one place where this one guy was responsible for a bunch of shit. I would often think to myself "if this guy is hit by a bus we'd be fucked for weeks". The guy got sick and was out for a few days. Lo and behold, work ground to a halt until he got back. During this fiasco everyone was saying that we needed to make changes and have redundancy so this doesn't happen again but once this guy came b
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The "abomination in VBA" may be so, but it has likely replaced tons of manual labor. When it outgrows the original author's skills, then there's no reason not to do a proper reimplementation. Yet all those abominations, usually, make their authors more productive. That's their goal. Scoffing at that is going full retard.
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Uhm, did I tell you to inform your boss? You can get all your work done (without errors once you perfected the script), AND read slashdot full-time. Win-win.
Duh (Score:2)
Automating tasks (Score:2)
Another skill we will only get underpaid for (Score:2, Funny)
The ammount of skills Network admins should know and still get paid a 10th of what we are worth is ridiculous.
I should be making close to 300k a year, Do you think any company would pay that?
So now I need to add codder to the resume which will effectively fall on my shoulders to maintain code? Bad idea.
I guess I should be happy and count my lucky stars that I have a job?
The one thing I have noticed in companies that Sales weasels get paid a lot more money than I and the responsibility lies on the network ad
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The one thing I have noticed in companies that Sales weasels get paid a lot more money than I and the responsibility lies on the network admin to keep it all running.
Yes. It's a backwards society. Black is white. 2+2=5.
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The next thing you know, the admins will want to be let out of the basement.
Perl (Score:5, Funny)
So, does Perl drive you crazy or do you have to be crazy to program in Perl?
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Yes.
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So, does Perl drive you crazy or do you have to be crazy to program in Perl?
Some people just can't get their head around Perl. That's OK, there's always python. We'll treat you with compassion.
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Having to document code is a code smell. Documentation is something that can easily fall out of sync with the source. It is best to program in a fashion that doesn't require documentation, if possible.
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There is a principle you've probably heard of called Don't repeat yourself (DRY) [wikipedia.org]. If you're unnecessarily repeating yourself you're creating opportunities to introduce bugs. So it is good to avoid documentation (such as code comments), if it isn't necessary. If it is necessary for whatever reason, then it is a good idea to create an automated system that checks to see if they stay in sync.
Is this what any programmer does? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm fairly certain that if all I did was write Perl, I'd go insane.
As a programmer, to me this is like someone equating author and typist. Code is just a medium. Figuring out what to do with it, and how, is the fun part.
Remember the judge? (Score:2)
Unfortunately (Score:2)
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Sounds like a plan! (Score:5, Insightful)
You doubling my salary for that extra work? I'm tired of the constant scope creep people keep shoveling in without an increase in compensation.
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Don't you see? Knowing how to code will make you more efficient. So, if anything, the amount of, er, whatever it is that you people do, can be increased!
Yes, early adopters will be able to demand a higher salary for any additional skills that they bring to the table. That is, until we can update our job requirements to include these skills (5 years minimum).
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There are "app" languages like Java/Ruby/PHP that will get you in that situation, and there are languages mostly regarded as tools for automation (Perl/$SHELL/Tcl?). So, there are two ways around it:
* stick to scripting (it'll make your everyday life easier) and refrain from learning these "dangerous" languages, or
* learn them (you'll gain additional insight on common programming pitfalls, making you a faster troubleshooter) and DON'T TELL YOUR BOSS.
Re:Sounds like a plan! (Score:4, Insightful)
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no, typically the pay will stay the same and any improvements won't be appreciated anyway. pissing up a rope.....
Sure so long as coders l2sysadmin (Score:3)
Then maybe I wouldn't spend an inordinate amount of time fighting with programs that can't understand how to run as a deprivileged user, that can't properly set up their own environment variables and so on.
So I'll promise to learn to program if they'll learn to sysadmin. Since I already know how to program then they'd better get on it.
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Then maybe I wouldn't spend an inordinate amount of time fighting with programs that can't understand how to run as a deprivileged user, that can't properly set up their own environment variables and so on.
We'll get right on that when everyone learns how to accurately analyse and communicate their requirements.
Depends on the Job Definition (Score:5, Informative)
Sometimes I play 'sysadmin'. It winds up as the "this doesn't work, make it work" role. Today it was reading the RFC's to figure out how DSN's are supposed to be returned, writing the java.mailx code to make the developers' app do that, and explaning how SMTP works. Other times it's working through a SQL query planner, finding why packets are headed in the wrong direction, re-doing an architecture, etc. It's not possible to do the job well without good CS training, a solid background in coding, a solid background in networking, and just plain blood, sweat, and tears.
Then again, you could study for a test exam in 21 days and call yourself a sysadmin too. It's always the definitions.
Ah, age. (Score:5, Insightful)
At one point, we *had* to code. Tools didn't exist until we made them. Or at least tools that did what *we* wanted didn't exist until we made them.
I blame Windows weenies for the loss of this skill. They cannot function without pre-packaged clicky things. Nitwits.
If all I did was write Perl (Score:2)
I'm fairly certain that if all I did was write Perl, I'd go insane
And that's the point when you officially become a perl hacker.
ANYBODY Would Go Insane... (Score:2)
Where do you think Slashdot came from?
Coders Should Know How To Sysadmin (Score:3)
I don't think anyone could argue that having skills in both areas isn't a good thing. I've been a sysadmin for 20 years and i've had to do basic development over the years (apache modules, ldap-ifying applications, etc). When it comes to troubleshooting complex problems as a sysadmin and the whole team is whiteboarding, you can tell pretty quickly who understands how systems work below the user interface. This is often only learned through writing code.
The opposite is true for coders too. With a few execeptions, the most competent developers I've worked with have had sysadmin duties at some point in their career. Not that long ago, I had to sit down with a Sr. (Java) developer and explain load balancers and TCP session state.
Perl is beautiful (Score:2)
I'm fairly certain that if all I did was write Perl, I'd go insane.'"
but Perl is a beautiful language!
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>Perl is a beautiful language!
Yes, for those with twisted minds.
Maybe (Score:3)
I don't know about full-blown compiled coding or anything, but sysadmins definitely should have a grasp of a scripting language relevant to their environment (such as vbscript for windows). There are too many times you get requests for stuff that inexplicably have no official support for, such setting up a default Outlook signature for all users that pulls information from their login profile. The sysadmin who can say "give me 30 minutes minutes and I'll have it ready for testing" will look a lot better than the sysadmin who says "we could buy an $800 program that will allow us to do that, but we'll still have to test it out."
This just in... (Score:3)
Experience in one field can be an asset in another due to inherent interdependent qualities! Wow!
But as many others here have pointed out, the last thing businesses need is another job to dump on the IT department while continuing to tighten their budget (because, hey, computers are just computers, if you know about them, you know everything about them, right?)
And the oposite. (Score:2)
Welcome (Score:2)
Captain Obvious...
Agreed (Score:2)
> I'm fairly certain that if all I did was write Perl, I'd go insane.
Especially Perl.
Those who can and those who can't. (Score:3, Interesting)
In my years as a Windows admin I found it interesting to find out which other admins could or could not write scripts and then classify them by the level of their abilities:
- The GUI clicker Guy .NET FrameWork, Activator, Marshall, Reflection, COM+, Jobs, Runspaces Guy .NET, API, SDK, MSDN, Compiler, Remote Debugger, Memory Dump Analyzer Guy
- The Command Line ipconfig.exe Guy
- The Google for a Script Guy
- The Cut-and-Paste Each Line Separately Guy
- The Excel Drag-and-Fill Guy
- The Search and Replace In a Script Guy
- The Batch Script with No "@echo off" Guy
+ The For loop Guy
+ The Reg.exe Guy
+ The PsExec Guy
+ The 2>&1 Redirect Guy
+ The Pushd/Popd Guy
+ The Setlocal Guy
+ The Rundll32.exe Guy
+ The Findstr.exe RegEx Guy
* The GnuWin32 Sed/Grep/Tee Guy
* The Cygwin Guy
* The Perl Guy
* The VBScript Retarted Syntax Language Guy
* The JScript Cool Web Language Guy
* The Script Signing Certificate Guy
@ The PowerShell Guy
@ The PowerShell & Quest PowerGUI Guy
@ The PowerShell & PowerGUI & 3rd Party Cmdlets Guy
@ The PowerShell & [.NET Framework] Accessing Guy
@ The PowerShell &
$ The Visual Studio C, C++,
$ Kernel Developer
Just have the Unix team do it (Score:5, Insightful)
I've found that what can happen in the large corporate world is that you have Developer teams, Production run teams, various IT infrastructure teams, and the Systems Engineers. Networking gets blamed for every outage because well, they are the common thread that all the bits run over. Storage gets stressed out because it is the last thing anyone thinks about until they need it, and the Systems engineers well the Developers want to play all roles unless they don't want to. Production run sometimes lacks the deeper skills of either programming or IT infrastructure.
Enter Unix Engineers. We are expected to have general knowledge of all IT infrastructure, which we do, we program and script extensively, because our automation depends on it, and we have extensive production application run experience do to managing all the different back end services that everyone depends on. mail, dns, ftp, sftp, web server engines, monitoring, etc. Yes a good sys admin must know how to at least read code and ought to be able to code/script in at least one language even if that is Dos Batch. The problem in the end though is as others point out. The more you know the more production run teams may lean on you to solve their problems. "Just ask the Unix team", Not because it is their responsibility, but because they can solve the problem quickly as they have the widest berth of knowledge.
Coding as a Sys Admin is crucial. Just know when to say I can't(or won't), for your sanity.
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But the sysadmin's job is to support the code and OS, not figure out what is wrong with the code when things break.
Strawman's argument. The article clearly is talking about using programming/scripts to facilitate the system administration jobs, which is a no brainer. It does not say to be a developer and hack in some change to a large app to fix an issue. Or perhaps I missed that part?
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Yes, it is the Sysadmin's job to figure out the code is broke, knowing how to program can tell you when there is a 'program' problem verses a hardware or network problem. You can then give better test cases and problem reports to the developers which allow the problem to be fixed faster.
Really this isn't any different then any other job out there. Lets say your a truck driver and your truck isn't working right. If you know very little about the internal workings of engines you'd tell the machine shop that '
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If you want that code to run in a massively-parallel hot-swappable environment, then you bet your ass you want your devs to understand everything running in that environment.
If, however, you want a standalone app to run on a few desktops, then no, your dev doesn't need to understand data center architecture; but in that environment, neither does your a
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Re:It's not all about the code (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow..... just wow. As an IT Manager you have failed to grasp the concept of this article, and that is a worry.
They are not talking about sysadmins writing production code - they are talking about using one of a variety of scripting languages to solve sysadmin problems - eg repetitive tasks like backups, deployment scripts etc, maybe even some html status monitoring screens or a cactus plugin.
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Re:It's not all about the code (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you are willing to accept an admin task performed manually, mistake creepage and all. With 500 workstations, there's no guarantee that the last one will be configured the same as the first. After the first few dozen, fat finger mistakes will undoubtedly creep in. By number 400, your admin won't be seeing straight anymore.
When we say "admins need to understand coding" this includes all of the associated issues of testing and configuration control. Perhaps not to the same level of detail as the code for the product. But in some cases, it can come pretty close.
I'd much rather have my admins script everything. And save the script. So when we come running in and ask, "What the **** did you do??!!", they have the exact steps in hand.
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scripts need to be developed carefully, within a process, and there's better people to do them than sysadmins alone.
So, who do you suggest write the scripts? And how do you get the domain knowledge and requirements from the system administrators to these script coders?
Re:It's not all about the code (Score:4)
So if a sysadmin does it manually with all the risk of mistakes it entails, that's fine and dandy, but if they dare write code for it, only then it's subject to the holy process? LOL.
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Err, Jesus man do you work for the telephone company? I swear to god each one of them has a little tiny job they know how to do and all other information is kept from them. Paperwork has to be filed for them to talk to any other person.
Anyway, this article isn't about any of this shit you just stated. It's just stating that sysadmins that know how to code notice problems faster and give better bug reports.. He doesn't even have to 'solve' them, he can pass that information on to the people that do.
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I really don't understand how somebody can effectively run a large number of *nix systems without being able to code, and with powershell etc it's probably the same with MS Windows.
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There's a difference between knowing how to code and doing it outside of established processes. The knowledge enhances the admin's ability by giving them a big picture view of the product life cycle. The same holds true the other way around (coders understanding admin tasks).
If the only way you can keep your employees from mucking about outside of established procedures is to hire those who don't know anything beyond their job description, you've lost control of your people.
I've worked at employers who in