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A Sysadmin for Sysadmins? 95

Posted by Cliff from the who-admins-the-administrators dept.
crazyharry asks: "I have recently been hired to be a system administrator to a bunch of system administrators. Aside from my personal experience, which is probably biased, I would like to know from the disproportionately large number of IT people here: if you, as a system administrator, were forced to have a system administrator, what would you expect of that role? How would you want your business machines (not the ones you admin, but your daily use machines) managed, if they were not up to this point? This is a mixed environment (Windows, Mac, and Linux/Unix), so feel free to assume I've already heard the 'leave me the FSCK alone' comments. What other issues are probably going to crop up, if you have been in a similar situation?"
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A Sysadmin for Sysadmins? More

A Sysadmin for Sysadmins?

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  • Quit (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KPU ( 118762 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @10:54PM (#14789953) Homepage
    Sysadmins are going to make your job hard (wouldn't you?). Nobody likes knowing how to fix a problem but having to go through somebody else. Why are you needed? This smells like a manager came up with the idea without understanding how sysadmins operate.

    • Re:Quit (Score:4, Informative)

      by cooley ( 261024 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @11:37PM (#14790156) Homepage
      I think a sysadmin can be of good use to sysadmins, in the right environment, though I must admit I've never done that. Right now I'm sysadmin for a bunch of software developers, but I've never admin-ed admins.

      Anyway, I look at it like this. Part of what a sysadmin does is decide what hardware we need, and order stuff. If I had another sysadmin ordering crap for me, that would be great! I'll worry about what the clients need, you order me a copy of the new version of XXX, or roll up to my desk with a gigabit network card and a grin on your face. That'd be great.

      When was the last time any of us Sysadmins came to work and somebody said "I ordered us all a sweet new mouse" or "hey the router config was horked, that's why we were having problems" or "hey, the RAID we back up to was getting kinda full, so I got us a shitload more drives". All those things, I ordered or fixed myself and *then* had to go be a sysadmin for the clients' machines.

      In a lot of companies, you're ordering/configuring/maintaining licenses and hardware for somebody else's business, or somebody else's department, or whatever. In my book, if the funds are there to have soembody around to take over those duties for my own department, that's cool. Just because I *can* do something doesn't mean I have time to.

      Sure, I'll fix my box when it has an issue. It's not like these sysadmins will need tech support; In the end IMHO your best use as an admin's admin isn't that much different though, aside from that. Keep stuff running smoothly so that I don't have to think about it. With users it's the same thing, except in this case the users are thinking about somebody else's network instead of shiny foil or whatever it is non-sysadmins think about.

      • Gah! (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        instead of shiny foil or whatever it is non-sysadmins think about.

        As a non-sysadmin I take extreme offense to that! It's not fai--- Ooh! Bouncy ball!

        • Re:Gah! (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Forge ( 2456 )
          I work for a company of contract geeks. One rule to remember is that "if everyone is responsible, Nobody is responsible." I.e. Who adds and deletes accounts for admins as they join and leave the team? You must have 1 individual with that duty otherwise it may not get done or worse get redone.

          Also there is the matter of accountability. If every nerd in the department has full read/write access to the Email server who do you fire (or shoot) when the mail you need for evidence disappears?

          So yes. Every IT
          • You must have 1 individual with that duty otherwise it may not get done or worse get redone.

            You should never have any duty that only 1 individual can accomplish. Even barring "hit by a bus" scenarios, there are "on vacation", "out to lunch", etc.

            What you want is good logging of who made what changes, and well-defined processes for dealing with common situations (new employee, employee leaving, name changes, replacing a desktop, etc).

            If every nerd in the department has full read/write access to the Email se
      • If I had another sysadmin ordering crap for me, that would be great!

        Not necessarily.

        Sure, many of your sysadmin-users will do their homework and get a WhizzBang hardware that can reasonably be integrated into your systems.

        But they can just as well grab a bleeding edge piece of hardware that will require weeks of blood, sweat and tears before you give up. All the while your pride as a sysadmin is on the line to install what someone else thinks is No Big Deal.

        No, I prefer to eat dogfood I've order myself

        • My friend, I've been a sysadmin for so long all my pride left me years ago. I grok what you're saying, but I'd hope that the admin's admin knew what they were doing, I guess. I'd also rather get some lame bleeding-edge hardware than have a non-tech manager who doesn't understand why we need to add money to the budget to replace the server we "just bought five years ago". :D

          LOL at the 'dogfood' comment, BTW.
      • lol @ shiny foil
    • This smells like a manager came up with the idea without understanding how sysadmins operate.

      I agree. My first thought on reading the submission was that this REEKS of micromanagement.
  • I've normally found managers that manage managers to be worthless. The best thing you can do is admin from a far and only let your presence be noted when things have gone badly. While guidance is appreciated too much guidance is, to quote the hippies, "a drag".

    Let your people show their strengths, don't force them to.
    • I've normally found managers that manage managers to be worthless.

      I'd suggest that this is because their roles are poorly defined. In this case I have to ask a couple of hard questions. Why do these guys need an admin? Are they incapable of managing their own machines? Are they too busy?

      If the role can't be well defined and a business justification made, the position should be scrapped.

      • The idea doesn't sound new to me. It is quite logical, my friend. I'm a Novell admin. Setting up a decent admin station can take some time. I recently worked in a large environment where my pc came pre-installed with XP (company standard), and all the tools i needed were available through Zen. The guy who set this up had the resposibility that all zen-apps were up-to-date and were set-up correctly. I found this very convenient. In this large and standardized network it almost was a full-time job to maintain

  • Good, Bad, Ugly (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dukeofshadows ( 607689 )
    As I see it:

    The *good* news is it might make existing sysadmins more symapthetic to the needs of their users if they have to experience the same sort of interactions with them that some experience with their co-workers (some of my own experiences have been negative in the past and as such are biased).

    The *bad* news is that more bureaucracy means more places for people to hide, more paperwork for everyone to got through, and another layer of clearance required for people to do their jobs.

    The *ugly* news is t

  • 2 types (Score:5, Interesting)

    by drDugan ( 219551 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @11:00PM (#14789980) Homepage
    in my experience, there are 2 completely differnt types of sys admins:

    - ones who think computers are their clients
    - ones who think people are their clients

    both have their plusses and minuses. it seems that some people fit one camp - other people fit into the other camp, and they don't easily change. personally I prefer the sys admins who focus on the people first, and get the computers to meet their needs. I'd make sure in your case you know the expectations of the people who you work for and work with and see if you fit their expectations.

    I would guess from your post, and the fact you wanted input from a large group of people on /. you are more the "people first type"

    Good luck!

    • Make that three - you forgot the type that feel the computers are their property, and the users would be better trusted with legal pads and abacuses.

      You can include me in the third type.

    • You missed the third type:

      Those who think about the needs of themselves.

    • Hmm, yes I agree ... sort of.

      I think that there is a 3rd type.

      - ones who think the business is their client.

      Where ultimately although people are important, they aren't more important than the business - no precious people please.

      Yes, people have to be able to do the job. But if the machines aren't working then the peope can't do the job. In a way you almost need to assume the worst of people - not nice, but by doing that you protect the business by ensure those that don't kow any better don't get 'their'
      • Damn straight. Your duty as a sysadmin is to ensure that the company can maxamize profits. Whenever you think about doing something, try and decide if it will make the company more money than it will cost.
        • While I won't argue with the "business first" and "maximize profits" goals, I would like to add that the obvious straight line isn't always the shortest path.

          A sysadmin maximizes profits by keeping the computer users productive. While system lockdown can tend to increase uptime, and improve the sysadmin's "productivity," it may very well impair the productivity of the users. Imagine a broad curve, with degree of lockdown on the X axis and net productivity on the Y axis. No controls at all, and productivity
          • It's not about users.
            It's not about computers.

            It's about configuring the computers so that the users can get the maximum amount of (business) work done, correctly, in the minimum amount of time and with the minimum amount of effort. With the required security.

            And in order to achieve that, you have to find the current bottlenecks and solve them. And those bottlenecks will vary from company to company and MAY NOT BE 100% TECHNOLOGICAL.

            Which means that you'll have to work around the existing corporate culture
    • i've been thinking about this a lot lately. back when i managed about 70 computers, i put people first. now that i manage about 260, i put computers first. it has a lot to do with what resources you have. it's easier to manage computers than it is to manage people's needs/wants/preferences.
      • you put the business first. anything else is myopic. thinking about whether you're on the side of the silicon or the human is foolish - you are supporting a business and that business' job is to maximise shareholder revenue. it might mean that you (for example) have to piss off a lot of people by restricting their user rights on a client PC because it demonstrably lowers support costs by x percent. it might be that you have to block certain ports on the firewall because some idiots are abusing your band

  • Not much difference... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by yuriismaster ( 776296 ) <tubaswimmer@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Thursday February 23, 2006 @11:02PM (#14789988) Homepage
    ....than how your sysadmins would run their network.

    You keep it open enough for them to do their job, and not much else, provide the proper storage and network services that they require, and that's about it. What I see as the main difference is that your users aren't dumb enough to open .exe file attachments, which is good for you.

    Expect a lot of griping from your sysadmins, mainly involving filtering out Quake server traffic, if it comes to that. You have a job to do, so just do it.

  • So, do you LIKE herding cats? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wcrowe ( 94389 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @11:02PM (#14789993)
    You're in for a tough job. This is bound to be even worse than managing a group of programmers.

    • Have to agree with the parent.

      "Admining Admins" has got to measure somewhere near "Smelling Armpits" on the "Vocational Desirability Scale".

      I've been a Product Manager, a Project Manager, and "The Guy With No Defined Duties, But Whose Job It Is To Make Sure This Stuff Works In The Way That Future Customers Might Expect It To Work".

      So, with the experience noted above, my advice would be...

      -Talk to the Admins.
      -Explain that your job is to make their job easier.
      -Your job is to run interference between them and

  • A Suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mr_Tulip ( 639140 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @11:03PM (#14789994) Homepage
    Delegate responsibility to the sysadmins, and set up guidelines as to who is responsible for what. Generally, be more of a manager than an active administrator.

    Also, don't be afraid to impose restrictions on the other administrators. Communicate clearly why these restrictions are required, and where possible, allow the administrators to make their case as to why they need the restrictions listed. Listen to their arguments, and alter your guidelines if needed.

    If you have time and money, play with the budget you have at your disposal to make life easier for yourself and your charges.

    • Re:A Suggestion (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ePhil_One ( 634771 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @01:44AM (#14790668) Journal
      Delegate responsibility to the sysadmins, and set up guidelines as to who is responsible for what

      You are suggesting he doesn't do his job? Personally, I'd lock them out of their machines and buy them all a second "Test" system that they could abuse (or better, a VMware/Xen virtual system that can be quickly restored when they screw it up), reformat at will, screw royally, etc. They can SSH / Terminal Server / X-window to THAT achine when they get the urge to "play", that way their system stays nice and stable. I think I'd also set that machine up on a isolated VPN just to be safe. Build them a sandbox. Just don't beleive because they can admin whatever systems they are responsible for they can admin their desktops. Thats HIS responsibility.

  • Simple. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Telastyn ( 206146 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @11:04PM (#14790004)
    Don't enforce; Provide.

    • Re:Simple. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MarkChovain ( 952233 )
      Excellent advice.

      I have seen two types of sysadmins in the past: the good ones, who see their role as a provider of IT services; and the bad ones, who see their role as the enforcers of rules and regulations. Consider both organisms such that you spend a lot better. Most of the things don't make you addicted to water and air. Computers don't have a game incorporated into your surroundings?

      When you get the kind of sysadmin who see their users as subordinates (rather than both groups working together toward
    • Don't enforce; Provide

      I'm always a little perplexed by this sentiment. It only makes sense if everyone working as admins on their own piece(s) of an operation are utterly trustworthy, completely competant, always farsighted, never snarky, always productive, and not ever inclined to go home at the end of the day having left something in a condition that only they can figure out, just in case of an HBAB (Hit By A Bus) event.

      A well-tuned shop assumes that all of that's in place and being embraced by ever
    • Agreed, having consulted in this role before. I have found that this is very very true.

      Most of the Sysadmins I was Sysadminning for were sysadmins for other organisations, not ours. They did remote support and on-site support. So essentially there was a break between external and internal. I was an internal sysadmin for a bunch of external sysadmins. (Remember what they say about the mechanic's car?)

      The role which I was doing was partly an enforcement role (The organisation I was consulting to had many part

  • suck (Score:2, Insightful)

    by kassemi ( 872456 )

    if you, as a system administrator, were forced to have a system administrator, what would you expect of that role

    You said it... If I were forced to have a system administrator... You should maintain your distance, be amiable. You should offer all the help you can to those who are either not doing things properly (in which case you can be somewhat forceful, but be sure you know they're doing it wrong), and to those who actually ask for it. If you start bossing them around, you're not going to last long (

    • Re:suck (Score:2, Funny)

      by LurkerXXX ( 667952 )
      if you, as a system administrator, were forced to have a system administrator, what would you expect of that role

      I'd expect them to know how easy it is to get trapped in the tape vault if they aren't nice to the other BOFH's in the office.

  • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • A sysadmin who expects to keep his job would have already disabled keyless (password, challenge-response) SSH on the server, so he'd need his SSH2 key as well.

      • A sysadmin who expects to keep his job would have already disabled keyless (password, challenge-response) SSH on the server, so he'd need his SSH2 key as well.

        Wrong.

        Electronics fail, USB keys get lost, floppies die, people die - but a piece of paper inside a safe with a password should be able to get authorised people in if necessary.

        If necessary I can log in with my mobile phone by password. Other people log in by password from easily stolen laptops - but the password is not stored on there in any form (s

        • Which is more secure - a long password that only makes sense to me stored in my head and a safe or a key on an easily stolen and hacked into laptop?

          Neither are good. You need a key with a good passphrase. If you are sick or injured, they can still get the password and log in on the console to add another Authorized_Key .

    • they usually have quite a bit of time on their hands anyway.

      You have never worked as a System Administrator at a real company.

  • I'm a sysadmin who has a sysadmin (Score:5, Informative)

    by Theatetus ( 521747 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @11:08PM (#14790024) Journal

    This seems to be the opposite of what other people say, but as a sysadmin who has a sysadmin I can say I like mine because I never have to apply my sysadmin-ing to our internal computers. I don't expect to be given Special Powers just because I've got root somewhere else, but I expect the same quality of service I deliver to our external clients (well, OK, I expect better than that).

    I'm not root on our local Linux boxes; I'm not a domain admin on our local Windows domain (though I think I'm a schema admin for some reason) -- I don't want to be. I want the local resources I need to connect out and do my work, and I don't want to have to think about them.

    YMMV.

    • 1) Get COPIES of the root passwords to the local hardware. Set up a patching scheme. Detail a non-intrusive patching schedule. Most admin machines are pretty out of date (since they often need to be used during the patching window, etc)

      2) find ways to consolodate resources that are stashed on the admins local boxes onto servers. All the data/services that the admin boxes provide, that end up being critical to the business [1]. Any NFS mounts or what not should be moved to a big raid5 volume, and shared

  • Uh, don't take the job? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by davie ( 191 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @11:10PM (#14790029) Journal

    You're being asked to fill a position that amounts to a collective slap in the face to a whole department. How do you think this is going to turn out for you? I don't have much information to work with here, but my suspicion is that you know that this situation is a bit awkward, to say the least, and you're not sure about it. Follow your gut and take a different job.

  • Is your job to manage a team of sysadmins, or just manage a bunch of desktop machines which happen to be used by sysadmins? The latter is generally a lot easier, although some admins can get as picky about someone managing their personal box as any huffy user.

    If you're just managing the machines, make sure you've got a software baseline (start with, what software do we have and how many legit licenses have we paid for), and make sure that all of the machines which are supposed to have that stuff do, and it

  • Only answer I can think of (Score:5, Interesting)

    by br00tus ( 528477 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @11:18PM (#14790074)
    Since usually I'm the sysadmin, I can only think of machines I used where I didn't have root access, yet used the machines.

    Two thing thats piss me off the most usually is limitations on my access, or annoying security measures, both of which I look at similarly because they are different sides of the same coin often. I host a website on a host where I don't have root access. They are supposed to be good, and a place geeks like to host, and for the most part they are. But having no root access can be annoying. For example, the machine load average was very high for some weeks. It would shoot up to something like 10 or 20 times the number of processors for an hour and then go back to normal. My e-mails to the techs didn't do anything for some weeks. My ps only let me see my own processes, I couldn't see what processes were hogging the machine. The first time they checked, the spike hadn't happened, so they had no idea what was wrong. So they were slow to do anything about it, I had the ability to better diagnose what was wrong. Eventually I ran a script that did an uptime every minute and wrote it to a file. But after two days they killed that - that's another thing, they killed a script that I was running. Although if it was an attempt to find this rogue process, I didn't care as much. Anyhow, eventually they fixed the problem.

    Another thing that happened with these hosters, which again is related to me not being able to see system processes with ps - one day my password protection for directories (htaccess) died. I had to recreate everything with their automatic system in terms of the htaccess and htpasswd files. I couldn't see what user was running our Apache web server processes, I just had no idea why it broke.

    Once I worked at a company where you needed SecureID to log into their machine for customers, among other security provisions. I thought it was rather silly - I only read mail from the machine, and not much else, why do I need a SecureID card to do that? Wasn't ssh enough? Did I have to carry around a SecureID card just to access this one machine and my e-mail which I read with pine? Again, a mixture of limited access and what I felt was unnecessary security is what pissed me off. Our company had a lot of smart programmers and sysadmins, I'm sure anyone motivated enough to hack in could get in and get root despite the SecureIDs. It sort of reminds me of the World Trade Center. The security to get in was ridiculous after the first bombing. But they hadn't walked into, but drove into the building the first time, so why was taking my picture and other silly measures necessary? It did little for them as they eventually got flown into, which destroyed the buildings. As I said, once something becomes a target for somebody motivated enough, there is little you can do.

    • Once I worked at a company where you needed SecureID to log into their machine for customers, among other security provisions.

      The one thing you don't want to do is add another layer of security to their machines or programs just because you can. Use as much as you need, but not one iota more.

      Back when I did tech support for a major ISP, our admins didn't understand this. One thing we needed, for a long time, was a telnet session into a certain mail server to allow us to check customer's email boxes and

  • Senior Administrator (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @11:28PM (#14790118) Journal
    The point should not be to have your finger in everyone's pie. The analogy should be closer to a hospital with a senior surgeon, vs a manager of managers.

    That said, if everything is working well, you become the buffer between the sysadmins and the rest of the world.

    You get to be the one that goes to HR and complain about Clueless User #69 in cubicle 18 with his inappropraite visit to the wrestling website that installed spyware for a solid hour over lunch [spywareinfo.com]. You would also get to run the pilot projects before they role out company wide. You test the new toys, using the other sysadmins in fair rotation as project managers for the test.

    You also get the really big headaches, like when Clueless User #69 is the incredibly cute and hot granddaughter of the boss, or some such thing (who never does anything wrong. No. Really.)

    • when Clueless User #69 is the incredibly cute and hot granddaughter of the boss

      If that's the case, why make a fuss when you have to go fix her machine? Heck, I'd be breaking stuff on it remotely at least once a week...

      I don't know what our network's problem is, Susie... There's no logical explanation for why your "My Docs" folder disappears every Thursday. I'll keep investigating it for you, though...
  • I would never hire a sysadmin for sysadmins. Sysadmins can do their own sysadmining. Each can have their own server, or everyone can know the root password. In fact you can do a round robin system or just nominate one sysadmin to have the root password. Why would you want to get a doctor for doctors (beside one of the doctors) or using the car analogy, a driver for a busload of drivers?

    If you have sysadmins admining different branches and you want a super sysadmin, you'd want a more senior admin, one who ha
    • The sysadmin for sysadmins can remove the routine tasks from the group; their machines will now be backed up and updated for them so they can focus on their other tasks. Their machines will be as similar as possible. When they break their own machine or need something new installed, they can go to lunch while someone else fixes it. And they now have someone else with which to compare notes about their activities and how to apply them to their own machines.
    • I would never hire a sysadmin for sysadmins.

      So you'd never hire a Windows admin to take care of the local workstations used by the UNIX and mainframe admins? Do you expect someone who spends every minute of their day babysitting an OS/390 server to keep track of which patches should be installed on his SuSE workstation? Or what about having the Windows admin also be responsible for managing the SAN shares where the office's files are stored, or the tape backup library that protects the same?

      In smaller shops
      • So you'd never hire a Windows admin to take care of the local workstations used by the UNIX and mainframe admins?

        WTF? Do unix and mainframe admins actually use windows as a desktop? I don't believe it.

        Do you expect someone who spends every minute of their day babysitting an OS/390 server to keep track of which patches should be installed on his SuSE workstation?

        Yes. If you think this is time consuming or difficult, I suggest you have another look at Linux since 1998.

        I've been unix/linux admin for 15 year
  • What are the expectations of the person that hired you to do this job in the first place? Why did they think these sysadmins needed a sysadmin of their own? That's where you have to start asking questions.

  • I think the most important possible thing is to take input liberally. It is likely that specific sysadmins will be more experienced than you in certain areas, or be able to figure out problems first. If so, you should thank the admin who gave you the input (where his boss can see), and implement it. The key being that you try not to be a hurdle, instead try to make things more effective by co-ordinating efforts, while at the same time winning allies by giving positive feedback to those who are intereste
  • Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here.
  • Just read The Register's BOFH (You don't have the link? Then you don't deserve to read it) to see why metaAdmin's are needed. It's not fiction, I spent 10 years as a BOFH and I laugh at their naiive approach.

    On the gripping hand, the retail company I work for at the moment has about 12 thousand servers to admin...

    • But in the case of the BOFH, who metaadmins the metaadmin? I wouldn't like to be the BOFH's metaadmin unless my practises were strictly aligned with his for fear of a long weekend in the tape safe :-)
  • That's all I need. Thank you very much.
  • Speaking as a sysadmin, we're lazy bastards. We don't replace people with very small shell scripts out of spite; we do it because it makes our lives easier.

    "How will this make my life easier?" is probably the top question a Sysadmin asks about everything he or she encounters, even ahead of "How will this help me crush my lusers, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentation of their women?"

    So the number one thing I can suggest is to find ways of making their lives easier/better - ideally ones which m
    • This was my first instinct. The sysadmin of a sysadmin should be a *programmer*.

      For the vast majority of clueless sysadmins, Microsoft is their programmer. But even leet *nix admins rely on improvements in their tools to help them work more productively.

      You could say the recent history of fracturing and rearrangements in the Linux community is a collective effort to answer this question: "What should meta-admins really do?"

      For, say, RedHat, their answer is "Make shiny graphical utilities that make sysadm
  • I expect stuff that WORKS.

    At my job, we the sysadmins have full responsibility for our Unix workstations (whether they be Sun, HP-UX, Mac OS X, et al.) However, the corporate Windows boxes, we're completely hands-off.

    That's fine with me; I'm not a Windows expert nor do I play one on TV.

    All I ask is that the tools I need there (mostly the Remedy client and Reflections X) work. And work well.

    If you can make things stable for me, I'm a happy camper. The machines are just tools to get my job done; like any o

  • Just be the cool guy... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AEther141 ( 585834 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @01:01AM (#14790521)
    with a cupboard full of spare parts and useful bits, a headful of clue and an open office door. Talk to all the people you're adminning for, ask them what they want doing and make sure you don't overstep your agreed-upon boundaries. Make it clear to everyone that you're just there to help everyone get their job done faster and whether they want root or just a reliable box to SSH from, that's what you'll provide. Deal with pissy bureocrats on their behalf, harangue the network guys when things go wrong, just try and create as pleasant and hassle-free environment as possible.
  • Their job is to make sure the "customers" are being served. Your job is to make sure they have what they need to do that, and to look at the bigger picture. In that sense, it means you're both a manager (of them) and a co-ordinator of the resources they need.

    Your charges can handle their own machines as well as the ones they administer, so let them. You need to set standards and goals, assess what the needs of the organization are at a higher level than what they can see, and (like any good Maitre d') ap
  • ...it sucks to be you!

    But seriously, I mean it.

    Best wishes and lots o' luck, bubba -- you really gonna need it.

  • At my job we have two distinct set of systems. The general computing environment, and our clustered computing environment.

    I am one of three admins of the clustered computing environment. The general computing admins run the wifi, all desktops and printers. The clustered admins run our high performance computing clusters.

    I have root on all machines on my floor, but in general the users go to the general computing admins. So I get to concentrate on my job, the clustered computing environment, and the general
  • ...or...

    Automate it, then get outta the way.

    I'm a sysadmin for several dozen engineers, and the approach I've taken is to writing the tools they need to do their jobs, toss the tools at them, and let them do their thing.

    If you're controlling resources, they should be able to allocate that stuff themselves and you should do just that--stay out of the way.

    If you're a service provider (doing the stuff they don't want to do), you don't need to ask /. what you're in for--they'll tell you explicitly and soon.

    If y

  • An effective compromise that works for us... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I work in a department of computer scientists, where the average user is more than capable of providing their own sysadmin support. We do have a computing support department.

    Effectively, the users partition themselves into two camps.

    The first camp is more supported. They have the "official" image loaded on their hard drives, they log into the domain as users, and so on. When their stuff breaks, support comes out and fixes it.

    The second camp is less supported. They have a "if I don't bother you, can you n
  • Chances are that you're being called in to help the other sysadmins focus on helping other people.

    The other sysadmins are not computer illiterate - they're not going to be installing Bonzi Buddy or anything. Just get them all together and ask them what they'd like you to do. Perhaps they'd like having the admin passwords in case of emergency, or perhaps they've found that that leads to problems. I'd look for a consensus from the people you'll be working with, because they all have sort of the same job,

    • "they're not going to be installing Bonzi Buddy"...on a well managed network, the users shouldn't be able to do anything that does any more than hoses that machine - certainly nothing that damages the network's integrity. a bored sysadmin who's a bit of a loose cannon? they'll be the ones putting in backdoors to the system, opening ports on the firewall so they can mess about, etc - they're the ones who can really pose a threat to the integrity of your environment and data...
  • A really boring machine on my desk, or an x-terminal (ok, sunray), well maintainewd, and with a copy of the root password in a sealed envelope pinned to the sysadmin's desk.

    If i can just ignore the machine and use it to access my lab mchines, then I'm happy. If I can't, and have to make emergency repairs, I can always rip open the envelope.

    This, by the way, is how I ran a department at Siemens, with considerable success.

    --dave

  • From what I've seen in many larger environments, there can be a fair amount of paperwork, formalities, and other stuff that isn't really getting much accomplished. Granted that some of it does have it's place (keeping effort from being duplicated, making sure stuff happens, and the like), but much is not.

    I would say that right in the middle of said paperwork would be a good place for an Admin of the Admins. They don't really need to have someone admining them, but it might really help to have someone who i
  • i've worked in a very mixed environ for the last 12 years(advertising/pre-press/graphic arts) and have had to support many different OS's and versions at the same time (win 95-2003, mac os9-10.x, sol 2.51-10, irix 6.5.x, aix 4.3.3-5, linux 2.4-2.6). having many different os's makes for some really interesting compatability issues... sometimes the sysadmin in place this are homegrown, possibly from the production environment, or was shifted into IT for political reasons or punishment. i've never come in as t
  • It's simple. There are resources they use and control, and they can do whatever they like, to the limits of company policy. There are resources you control, and they can use them in ways you allow, to the limits of company policy.
    In other words, if you break your server, you get to keep the broken bits. If you break my server, I'll sweep up your broken bits :-).
  • Why would a sysadmin need a sysadmin? This seems like a redundancy. Furthermore, your position as a sysadmin of sysadmins seems like it is only going to generate friction. Why would I, as a skilled sysadmin, want you to fix/adminster a machine that I use when I am perfectly capable of doing so myself; furthermore, I can fix it quicker, not only because I am there, but because I am probably better at troubleshooting than you are.

    I guess what I am getting at is that in order for your position to have meaning,
  • I've worked as a sysadmin at a company that provided consulting services to a range of clients. I was lucky in that my manager was very technically competent (moreso than I in a lot of areas, though I loved to impress him with my knowledge in other areas). He controlled the company infrastructure, which we had limited or no access to beyond user priveleges (with the exception of our desktops). As long as our desktops were functional, had the software appropriate to our jobs, we had flexibility in terms of

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