Tell me about being a sysadmin, Cred Forums. Anyone here work as one? What's it like?

Tell me about being a sysadmin, Cred Forums. Anyone here work as one? What's it like?

Also, have you ever built your own server and placed it into colocation data center? What do you run on one?

ps; interesting tidbit... you can't start a thread on Cred Forums that has sysadmin in title.

bump! no sysadmins on Cred Forums? weird...

bump

I'll dump some sysadmin pron while we wait for some knowledgeable anons...

SysAdmin here.

Shit's boring if you're responsible to monitor the servers, which I do most of the time. Rarely I have to touch any router or switch, everything was done years ago and if it's not broken, don't fix it.

would you recommend someone pursue it as a career? what kind of qualifications would I need?

if you have to ask you probably shouldn't

>would you recommend someone pursue it as a career?
Only if you really need it or like it somehow, most of the time you won't be doing anything productive and the payment is low, at least where I live.

Having a networking/IS grade or certs would help a lot, specially CCNA or LPIC-1 and above.

I've been looking at job postings in the NYC and sysadmins start at around 100k. some jobs go for $130-150k! so it can't be that bad.

a community college close by offers CCNA courses... mite be a good option for me...

you sure as shit are not going to get a job like posting a thread like this

huh? what's the point of your posts? you're just some jealous neckbeard or something. I posted a thread asking about sysadminning. not about finding a job.

I think garbage collection would suit you better, OP.

Then by all means go for it, because things aren't that nice where I live.

Just remember there's a good amount of people with CCNA certs so things would get a little competitive. Don't settle for just one cert, go get the others

I fucking hate these "sysadmin/server porn" pictures, a real server that's in use won't look like that. If something goes wrong you can't easily get to "x" patch cable/run.

It sure as shit will. These pics are from OVH server farms.

thanks for the advice bro! also, windows or linux certs?

no, he asked for sysadmins, not one man bands

Linux certs are rare these days, go much cheaper than MS and there's a good demand for LPIC certified professionals. Even Linux Essentials might land you a nice job.

MS is not bad either, but I would go for a Linux cert first if I was you.

i work as a system admin for a small non profit ask me anything

What do you do day-to-day? Do you rely a lot on monitoring tools? What kind of setup do you run on servers?

Most stressful experience while at the job?

>MS is not bad either, but I would go for a Linux cert first if I was you.
thank you for the advice! I run linux at home so I like that option a lot better.

i'll look into LPIC-1 and CCNA course.

So do you niggas just play vidya for most of the day?

the most stressful day on the job really was when the firewall died randomly on me and we had bring it back to life. then the fucking configurations got corrupted and we had to load up the new configurations that took forever all the vpns that day were down for like 3 hours so many calls and emails that day it was annoying

we use windows sever 2008 and windows 2012 as the domain sever with a watchguard firewall and vpn

well i just do alot of reading at my job i also do help desk

sounds comfy! have you ever been hacked? how often do you backup stuff? do you use HDDs, tapes or somethign else?

It's boring and lazy right up to the point where you spend 4 hours AFTER work for a week straight researching why something keeps failing. And the next week 4 hours after each workday writing documentation for good to avoid it.

its pretty comfy na we never got hacked but we backup incremental mon-fri then a full back up on saturday is the same thing for the email

nice. do you colocate servers or host on premises with a business fiber line or something?

but op best thing to do is just become IT manager or IT Director that pay is so nice

I did some sysadmin while I was in school at a chem lab working on some big NSF and NiH funded initiatives.

It was a pretty nice job. All of the machines that weren't docker containers were on Gentoo by the time I left.

My impression is that the job gets perpetually easier each year with better tools and automation.

One of the best parts of the job is the access to hardware that you would never otherwise see or touch. You get to experiment with some pretty neat stuff. It's also really fun problem solving if you like that, but putting out fires can also become tiresome.

The worst part of the job is having to go fix something that goes down in the middle of the night and becomes unreachable over the network. From what I understand, being on call like that is pretty common.

well this the thing right now we have everything on site but we have a small campus so we backup to our nas in a different building in the campus

>The worst part of the job is having to go fix something that goes down in the middle of the night and becomes unreachable over the network. From what I understand, being on call like that is pretty common.
Amazon is infamous for that. Apparently, if you're on "pager duty" and you get a call and don't log in within 5 min, you're fired or something.

i agree same with me also because i work 80 miles away from my house

>but op best thing to do is just become IT manager or IT Director that pay is so nice
That shit takes 10+ years of experience at the very least.

bro when they mean 10 years is actually 6-7 yrs you need you should be fine that experience is gonna come by fast I just started working as a system admin/ helpdesk and by the time i finish school and work a bit more is gets eazy

I'm the Sysadmin/Network admin for my home lan does that count?

Server OS- Windows Home Server 2011. Don't let the name fool you, it has some nice Server 2008R2 features buried under the hood, ready for use if you bother to look. Most people only use the dashboard for daily tasks but like I said if you do a little poking around you can do a lot more with it.
Mine's setup to do the following:
1. Daily backups for all my client pc's (pretty much runs itself after you tell it what you want to backup)
2. IIS - Fully functional so I've setup both a Ftp and Web server.
3. DHCP server
4. DNS server
5. VPN server
6. CA (Certificate Authority)

Also can install WINS server but really pointless unless your running really old os like Win 3.1.
Now backups of the server's drives are handled by Macrium Reflect v6 Server edition due to it supporting GPT drives and doesn't have any file size/drive size limits as with the built in utility (Not a fault of WHS, limitation of VHD format)

very interesting setup! do you use a rackable server or just some old PC to run your home server?

>6. CA (Certificate Authority)
I understand the need for the rest of the things you listed but I don't understand why you run your own CA?

Well I use a custom built pc with a mid tower case to house the server's components. Has ten bays. Can expand with usb external drives if I ever need to. As for the CA, WHS installs that role during setup. It's for secure communication between clients or any web access you need. So for example you could do a remote desktop session from anywhere in the world to your server and it would be secure, least transmission wise.

thanks for the info! sounds like a nice setup.

Sysadmin, 4 years experience (3 years in desktop support before that).

Anyone here work as one?
Yep
What's it like?
Easy since I spend all of my time scripting, non-scripting sysadmins have a hard time
Also, have you ever built your own server and placed it into colocation data center?
Nope.
What do you run on one?
Why not just get a vps?

ps; interesting tidbit... you can't start a thread on Cred Forums that has sysadmin in title.

Also I run Serviio DNLA media server. Combined with WD TV Live player you can play pretty much any standard video/audio format. or stream it via internet to a web browser outside your lan. Yes, WHS does have DNLA media streaming built in but the playback support isn't as broad as it is with Serviio/WD. For the 2TB VHD limit, unless your trying to backup 2TB+ from each client pc you've nothing to worry about. (and if you do it kinda defeats the point of having a central file server to start with). I've got 4 client pc's and the biggest HDD of the four is only 320GB.

I make 92k

You just need to move somewhere nicer (or realize that you aren't actually a sysadmin).

This user gives bad advice and the proof that he doesn't make very much.

1) Getting a bunch of certs is stupid and a red flag

2) focusing on CCNA is pointless if you aren't doing only networking.

Why are you suggesting people do a really easy beginner tier linux cert and a relatively difficult networking cert?

Why didn't you send an e-mail saying the service was down?

Wow, imagine seeing you here!

>Why not just get a vps?
Docer stuff, right?

No it doesn't.

>Docer
wat

Certs aren't bad. If you've got hands on training to go with them. ex, build your own lan,pcs,install AD,etc don't just pass the tests, put that knowledge to use. or rather use the certs to prove to someone that yes, you do know what your doing. so if joe bob's netbook get's trashed or ran over you can retrieve the data from a backup rather than throw up your hands in despair like a clueless dumbwit who's never done it before

Docker.

This is how I know you have no idea what you are talking about:

You talk about how great certs are then you describe fixing someone's laptop which is the lowest tier lowest paid IT work.

>I'm the Sysadmin/Network admin for my home lan does that count?
no

>custom built
you make it sound like what chinese children do everyday is something special. your shitbox isnt special.

>I've been looking at job postings in the NYC and sysadmins start at around 100k. some jobs go for $130-150k


How many years of experience are required for these positions? What other qualifications are required?

You have to take into account opportunity costs and counterfactuals. Sure someone will get a 100k starting job as a sysadmin but is that someone you and what could you have done instead?

I don't do anything with docker, all my vms are in esx on prem and we have some azure and aws stuff too.

>How many years of experience are required for these positions? What other qualifications are required?
Don't remember off hand but it wasn't much. I'm sure you can become a junior sysadmin for $80-90k.

>and what could you have done instead?
do you have any other suggestions? I'd consider anything but learning Java and having to compete with millions of Pajeets.

Does anyone happen to know if I could get a job in IT with felonies?

junior admins make about as much as a desktop support tech.

Robert half has a good pay calculator, I use it pretty regularly when I negotiate pay.

apparently, everything's moving to Docker and Kubernetes. Worth learning both.

it's harder.

I have a part-time student job as a sysadmin at my uni's IT department. Does that count?

Well, you pay your dues. You spend a 6-12 months slaving at some place as a junior and then you either re-negotiate or just move somewhere else.

>everything was done years ago and if it's not broken, don't fix it.
amen

Also, everything's been done before, but you need a good instinct for when rolling your own will be less work than getting the existing crap to fulfill your needs

It's good to learn, but never think that everything is going a certain way.

one year of experience will not get you a good paying sysadmin job.

Docker is a cul-de-sac and lock-in trap for small businesses that don't know any better

It will also be the downfall of the next generation of amateur hosting

>and what could you have done instead?
Not to sound corny but, user you can do anything you want.

Personally I would develop a meth addiction, bang hookers, and live on the streets, but that lifestyle isn't for everyone.

You fail a basic status signaling part of the highering process. Basically employers sort through thousands of job applications for each position. That shit is hard, so they employ a bunch of filters to make it easier. One of the first filters they apply is felony or no felony.

>I'm sure you can become a junior sysadmin for $80-90k
I'm sure someone will get this get job, but is that someone me?

I've done it for many years. If you are a curious, ambitious and energetic sort, and play your cards right, you can make a nice living and work your way into a nice life.

You're better off, at a minimum, starting your career in a major metro area, frankly. Smaller towns have sysadmins but generally smaller footprints, smaller budgets, smaller companies and way smaller pay.

>I'm sure someone will get this get job, but is that someone me?
With that attitude? No :^)

Too bad, because my cases were simply drunken property damage. Guess I'm stuck busting my ass doing electrical work with a 2-year renewable energy degree I'm not really interested it doing.

The problem isn't insurmountable, it just a numbers game. The felony means you have to send out more applications before you get a positive result.

The powah of positive thinking!

Every time I went into a job interview feeling cocky, I got the job.

The company I was working for was going under so I had to find a job quick, so I threw out a bunch of resumes and also included one job that was application development/support which, as a sysadmin I don't ever do, but it paid more than I was making by about 15k.

Interviewed, told them that I had no idea how to do the job but that I really wanted to learn and that I was confident about my ability to excel at it and they hired me almost immediately.

I took a sick day to go to that interview, at which point my company announced that they shut down operations on the west coast and closed my entire building and laid me off.

Worked out pretty well now I do C# stuff, which really isn't that different than the powershell I was doing.

>The powah of positive thinking!
I'm just being tautological

Self-fulfilling prophecies are self-fulfilling prophecies

Electricians make more than IT guys btw.

That's good. I feel dumb anyways for getting into this because it's really just a solar installation/wind turbine maintenance degree but I guess I could see what I can do with it.

My dad was the network analyst or whatever at a state college so I def have the ability to do something computer related too.

Best of luck to everyone, and OP hope to see you next summer

What are the second and third rack from the top? It looks like they have little racks in them, what are the little cards and why is nothing plugged into them?

And whats that gold thing on his shoes? is it something for the server or does he just have meme shoes?

>sysadmin
Mind-numbing work with shitty systems under atrocious management until you're over 40 and have enough workplace experience to become management and actually make things better.

>built your own server
Hardware-wise? You don't fucking build servers, you buy OEM through a VAR or a direct sales manager from the OEM, otherwise you can't get that sweet, sweet support service. Hard drive dies? Call the number, give them your name and the serial, tell them what happened, and a new drive is there the next morning.

If you mean software-wise, yeah, but it's not glamorous.

You seem to be thinking of homelab type stuff, where you set up servers at home to tinker with. I've got several servers and a lot of cisco gear, with a new 40 core/256gb RAM server arriving next week. I'll migrate my VMs over from my older hardware and trash the old kit.

You're fucking retarded if your monitoring isn't fully automated.

Certs are useless, and any competent manager knows this. You will be tested on technical aspects during an interview, and unless you studied to truly understand as opposed to studying for the cert, you will fail. If there is no technical test, you will end up working a shitty job at a shitty workplace, making a sub-par salary.

If you're genuinely motivated to learn, you won't need a training course for the cert, simply to read a few books to know how to apply the knowledge you gained by yourself to the tests.

NYC sysadmins make large amounts of money because living expenses in NYC are extremely high. 6 figure salaries are incredibly common in California, again, because living expenses are high. You don't end up taking home much more than you would in a smaller city or even in a rural area, provided you can find a job.

You will also not get a job as a sysadmin. You will probably do helpdesk with a fancy title for 3-5 years.

Maybe they're compute blades connected by some sort of high-speed interconnect on the other side?

>You're fucking retarded if your monitoring isn't fully automated.
What monitoring software do people use in the real world?

At my home and my university I set up icinga2 (for alterts) and munin (for post-analysis), but I'm curious what bigger companies use.

I vaguely remember some presentation by amazon or something on the subject but I don't remember the details

I work for a small colocation/hosting company. We used Nagios and have since moved to PRTG.

I am the director of technology for the largest department of a university.

I love it. My coworkers rock.

I can't imagine what a rat's nest your datacenter looks like. I hope it catches on fire and burns to the ground.

The way you're dropping these terms is so adorable.

This user knows what he's talking about.

You're probably just glorified helpdesk.

Nagios is fairly popular, but actual solutions are highly dependent on what you're doing, what scale you're on, and how much money you can budget.

>You're probably just glorified helpdesk.
We have multiple students working and sort of split up the duties. Some do glorified helpdesk work, but I mostly assist my boss with server administration and debugging. (I don't contact students at all, and do most of my work from home, which my boss is fine with)

It's pretty comfy and has me doing what I do for fun in my free time anyway, so I'm very happy with the position, but I'm sort of wondering how different it would be from actually working in the “real world”.

>work at startup
>learn about every single system we have because there's only two of us
>hire a few people I went to school with
>guy two does the same
>still have to know everything about everything
>makes us really general
>guy two goes into management
>they bring in new directors after we get bought out
>our student acquaintances start to leave
>really worried that when the new C level guy starts hiring actual specialized dev/ops guys they'll know a ton more than me in each of their respective areas and I'll just be worthless
>they hire one Sr system guy
>and another
>and another
>and another
>etc
>some of them have been in the field for over 20 years
>they don't know fucking shit
Never trust a cert whore friends. Out of the dozen or so people now working in the department only one guy (a Cisco guy in his 50s if you're curious) is any better than I was just winging it as a kid.
It's actually really fucking depressing. These people struggle to even google shit. Like they have to be told every little thing.

My only regret is they didn't fire me when they bought us out.

not that user but they are SuperMicro MicroClouds, Cisco Nexus 3064-Ts and a some other switch i cant identify, its not a catalyst 4948/4948E. God only knows why the cables going to the Nexuses are going to the back of the racks. Or why there aren't any 40g uplinks in the 3064.

>he doesnt stock parts

I just mean these things, big circle
And the ports, small circle, are empty. If nothing is even plugged in what the ruck are they for?

>big circle
blades for the MicroCloud

>small
pic related

we'd never deploy custom built stuff into any of our colo's. You buy enterprise and a support plan to have accountability.
As for what's its like, its hard to say because its a very vague job title. I do windows and linux systems administration. I automate junk in between projects... Thrilling.

Right, but its not hooked up. Is it hooked up in the back?
I always see shit like this in the server racks.. theres just shit sitting there not connected to anything.
Nice pic btw.

>Is it hooked up in the back?
Only thing in back are fans and power jacks. they havent finished wiring that rack obviously yet for some reason took pictures of it.

oh, I guess that I just keep seeing pictures of half finished servers and servers with extra parts that arnt used.. Idk, it kinda fucks with my ocd a bit.

I've used nagios when I had no budget and solar winds when I did.

That's not system administration

The IT department should only be about 3% of your company. Basically your company is fucked.

server administration and debugging is not system administration?

You use the word, but what you describe is not what you're calling it.

Is it possible to land a junior sysadmin job straight out of college?

Helpdesk work is not system administration? What's you're point?

Exactly. Help desk is not system administration

I think it is. Administering the system includes directly dealing with the operators of the system.

What else magically becomes what you think it is just because you think it?

It magically becomes the way it is described by its name. System administration: to administer the system. If helping a user with their use of the system isn't administering to the system, I don't know what is.

B O R I N G
O
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I thought I'd be a sysadmin, because I was genuinely interested in machines and networking.
I even started my CCNA.
Until I realized how boring it would be.
So I decided to continue studying in order to do R&D rather than maintenance.

I still got my CCNA cert, since it genuinely interested me.

But all I described was “server administration and debugging”. How can you tell from this description that it's not system administration?

I'm not the guy who you're waving your dick at but that's why I hate the title. Its super vague so people think they are this general title when they're kinda not... which also proves the point that its so vague. Its kinda opinionated. Helpdesk people can be considered "administrators or a system" but they can't learn shit and the only projects they actually have are like... image a new machine or upgrade this software.

I claim to be a sysadmin because I delegate tasks to our service desk, I spen time implementing systems and organizing projects, and I'm in our colo's like 20% of a week like once a month (lot of recent blade upgrades, this should drop very soon).

Its just so vague... might as well be a "financial analyst". What do you do? I analyze money!
What do you do? I administer a system!

>Helpdesk people can be considered "administrators or a system" but they can't learn shit and the only projects they actually have are like... image a new machine or upgrade this software.
If you wanted to say you were a sys admin you would be scripting this tasks.

> I'm in our colo's like 20% of a week like once a month (lot of recent blade upgrades, this should drop very soon).
you're a rack monkey, not a sys admin

I'm a rack monkey because I head to the colo? Finishing up a colo relocation, does that make me a monkey? This proves my point even further about ague titles but from the opposite end - people try so hard to pigeon hole other roles while claiming to be very vague ones. Its hilarious and usually done by the inept.

Scripting a task doesn't make one a "sysadmin". Then you have to define scripting. Is it some stupid drive mapping batch script that the helpdesk tote around like its a trophy of knowledge? or is an actual tool that someone put time into? For instance, I have powershell scripts that are scheduled to run that perform all the WSUS and exchange maintenance, but do those alone make me a sysadmin???

>Finishing up a colo relocation, does that make me a monkey?
yes

You two are overthinking this.

If you are administrating systems, you are a systems administrator. It's literally the most self-descriptive label you could ask for.

tl;dr are you in charge of making sure the systems continue to run optimally on a day-to-day basis? You're a sysadmin

t. helpdesk monkey who think he's bigger than he is

If it is your core competency to administer a system, then you are a sysadmin. Writing "scripts" or "programs" to flip some bits in your system is system administration even if your core competency is to take care of the database system. It doesn't imply that you're a system administrator until you find that your work extends to administering the general system as a normal part of your job.

>helpdesk monkey
que?

A "system administrator"

What does helpdesk work have to do with system administration?

They also have to deal with the thought that making one mistake could be all that they will ever make.

My mistakes involve system downtime, their mistakes involve being fried.

some servers for yah.

Sysadmin and coder of like 5 websites here, two with high traffic and nasty malicious haters. Shit is fun basically coded a lil bot to do maintenance for me and also much of the stuff is automated by scrips. One time two servers went bananas and caused damages to users for 15k or more, two days of hell followed but fixed everything and managed to save those 15k. Pay is good I earned more than 4k some months but this month 1.5k only. The funny thing is I have no degree no certs no github no socials no nothing and do evertything alone, from code to servers and all kinds of shit. It takes his toll on mental health tho, stress is high and sleep is tight. Was probably very lucky to find this job back then.

>But does the air conditioner condition the air?

Yeah