Posted on 12/04/2019 3:29:58 AM PST by ShadowAce
Linux system administration is a job. It can be fun, frustrating, mentally challenging, tedious, and often a great source of accomplishment and an equally great source of burnout. That is to say, it's a job like any other with good days and with bad. Like most system administrators, I have found a balance that works for me. I perform my regular duties with varying levels of automation and manual manipulation and I also do a fair amount of research, which usually ends up as articles. There are two questions I'm going to answer for you in this article. The first is, "How does one become a system administrator?," and second, "What does a Linux system administrator do?".
Since there's no Linux system administrator college major and no real learning track for Linux system administrators, how does one become a Linux system administrator? Most Linux system administrators (SAs) entered the field by accident. No, seriously. Just ask one. Some SAs took up Linux as a sideline, to their duties as Unix SAs, as interest and adoption grew in the late 1990s. As Linux became a data center standard and the various Unix "flavors" waned in popularity, those who'd dabbled in it were converted to Linux administrators out of need.
For new Linux administrators, many enter the job from their interests as home enthusiasts, gamers, or clandestine administrators of college servers. This is how it happened for me. As soon as I saw Linux for the first time in 1995, I was hooked. By January of 1996, I had started the local Linux User's Group (LUG) here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, much to the chagrin of the Unix Special Interest Group (Unix SIG).
My beginnings with Linux were rocky. I first ran across Linux in a magazine where I could purchase a 2 CD set in early 1995 when I worked at WorldCom (Yes, that WorldCom). I installed a group FTP/download server for my desktop support group coworkers. A few weeks later, I was told by one of the "gurus" in another group, "We don't allow Lye-nix on our network." I wasn't convinced of course that it mattered what was allowed and what was not, so I kept the server but installed Samba on it and changed daemon header information to make it look like my little system was a Windows server.
After I left the Desktop support group, I moved on to Windows domain administration. I installed a Red Hat Linux 4.0 system that I also hid under my desk from prying eyes. I also installed Samba on it to fool network probes and my annoying team leader who once asked, "What is that Linux server doing for us?" My answer was, "It isn't doing anything for us, but it's doing a lot for me. I use it for research." I kept the Red Hat Linux system until I moved to a different group. Linux was still not allowed on the network. I still didn't care. Yes, I was defiant and terrible but I was also not going to sit around messing with Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 while the rest of the world embraced Linux.
Even getting the LUG started was difficult. I had only about eight people who were interested and it was very frustrating. After almost a year of being too frustrated to continue, I passed the LUG torch to another group member. The Tulsa Linux User's Group is still going today and meets once a month on the University of Tulsa campus. They still have install fests and lots of activities. And, believe it or not, Linux is now the major *nix operating system in that chilly data center that once didn't allow it. It's no longer WorldCom but some iteration of Verizon. The same people work there and none have ever apologized for their behavior nor have they said, "Hey, Ken, you were right about Linux." I'm not going to hold my breath waiting either.
Other than sneaking into Linux system administration by some circuitous path, the more direct and recommended route is to still learn on your own but take some formalized Linux classes to prove your learning milestones. Being self-taught is great, but you'll always just be an enthusiast or hobbyist unless you can formalize your knowledge with certifications or some other proof of knowledge. Self-education is commendable but you'll have significant gaps in your learning. You should set certification knowledge as your goal, whether you become certified or choose not to do so. For a good start, check out Professor Messer's videos on YouTube.
Also, use free resources such as Opensource.com and Enable Sysadmin to enhance your knowledge and to expand your network of learning opportunities.
A Linux system administrator wears many hats and the smaller your environment, the more hats you will wear. Linux administration covers backups, file restores, disaster recovery, new system builds, hardware maintenance, automation, user maintenance, filesystem housekeeping, application installation and configuration, system security management, and storage management. System administration covers just about every aspect of hardware and software management for both physical and virtual systems.
Oddly enough, you also need a broad knowledge base of network configuration, virtualization, interoperability, and yes, even Windows operating systems. A Linux system administrator needs to have some technical knowledge of network security, firewalls, databases, and all aspects of a working network. The reason is that, while you're primarily a Linux SA, you're also part of a larger support team that often must work together to solve complex problems. Security, in some form or another, is often at the root of issues confronting a support team. A user might not have proper access or too much access. A daemon might not have the correct permissions to write to a log directory. A firewall exception hasn't been saved into the running configuration of a network appliance. There are hundreds of fail points in a network and your job is to help locate and resolve failures.
Linux system administration also requires that you stay on top of best practices, learn new software, maintain patches, read and comply with security notifications, and apply hardware updates. An SA's day is very full. In fact, you never really finish, but you have to pick a point in time to abandon your activities. Being an SA is a 24x7x365 job, which does take its toll on you physically and mentally. You'll hear a lot about burnout in this field. We, at Enable Sysadmin, have written several articles on the topic.
Doing the technical stuff is relatively easy. It's dealing with people that makes the job really hard. That sounds terrible but it's true. On one side, you deal with your management, which is not always easy. You are the person who gets blamed when things go wrong and when things go right, it's "just part of your job." It's a tough place to be.
Coworkers don't seem to make life better for the SA. They should, but they often don't. You'll deal with lazy, unmotivated coworkers so often that you'll feel that you're carrying all the weight of the job yourself. Not all coworkers are bad. Some are helpful, diligent, proactive types and I've never had the pleasure of working with too many of them. It's hard to do your work and then take on the dubious responsibility of making sure everyone else does theirs as well.
And then there are users. Oh the bane of every SA's life, the end user. An SA friend of mine once said, "You know, this would be a great job if I just didn't have to interface with users." Agreed. But then again, with no users, there's probably also not a job. Dealing with computers is easy. Dealing with people is hard. Learn to breathe, smile, and comply if you want to survive and maintain your sanity.
Being a Linux system administrator is a rewarding job. It carries with it a great deal of responsibility. It is sometimes unpleasant. It is sometimes really fun. It's a job. Linux SAs come from a variety of backgrounds. They are among IT's most creative and interesting people as well. I've known SAs who were visual artists, chefs, brewers, filmmakers, writers, furniture makers, sword fighters, martial artists, and a dozen other oddball hobbies. System administration isn't easy nor is it for the thin-skinned. It's for those who want to solve complex problems and improve the computing experience for everyone on their network. It's a good job and a good career. Explore it.
Tech Ping
forgot the most important part
How much $$$
Ping
My son is an aerospace engineer and his entire company uses Linux. He taught it to himself.
sudo root
Our mainframe is Linux.
I was a Unix admin for 30 years. Specialized in AIX, HPUX and Solaris depending on the account I was working on. I was certified in Red Hat but never had to do much with it.
The last 10 years I worked on an account where the customer - the customer! - requested that the admin staff be comprised of 7 senior admins. They were willing to pay for senior, experienced, competent admins. It was a dream team. We could do and fix anything with ease with no drama. It was a pleasure to go to work. The we had to hire a girl.
Ping!
I work for a large organization. Large enough that the admin tasks mentioned in the article are separated into different teams.
We have a networking team, a Windows team, an Open Systems team, a backup/recovery team, two different storage teams, etc. Makes my job a lot easier.
Oh, and I get compensated quite well for what I do.
I started my career coding COBOL for mainframes, transitioned to installing HPC clusters around the world, taught myself Linux, and am now a Linux admin, certified by Red Hat.
That's why they are referred to as Lusers.
"An SA friend of mine once said, "You know, this would be a great job if I just didn't have to interface with users."
A Basil Fawlty quote for sure.
Good article. However, in my last position we had one Linux sys admin (80/20 Windows environment), and he is NOT overworked. One, the Linux systems were not touchy and “just worked”. Two, we had competent (usually) network and firewall people who fixed more than they broke. Three, there was adequate support on the apps side. I worked on the Red Hat TSM backup server, but also the appliance/SuSe Linux setup, knowing precious little Linux, but enough to hold up my end of the App.
Biggest headaches, people who would not accept that their app issue was not the Linux admin’s OS Issue (often after patches), and oddball boxes. On my side they were the numerous Novell Netware servers still in use at branches. For him it was a legacy app running on a handful of Solaris servers.
All in all, he complains about his job, but he really isn’t too stressed out.
Our Windows team is about twice the size of the Open Systems team. We have about 2000 Linux servers (>2000 windows servers) and 5 linux admins. We are not overworked in general, but there are times when we could use another person or two on the team.
I was a Jack of all trades. At Microsoft I supported the people who supported Windows, but also the support personnel for all of the other various technologies. So there was the Token Ring integration team, and the AIX team, the Oracle team and the SAP team (among many others). Their focus was on systems integration and my job was mostly hardware support.
Later I worked on campus for MSNBC. I did desktop support for the newsroom, but was also tasked to provide support for the Mac machines that the art department used. No one else wanted to support them because no one else understood them (remember - this was a Windows shop) and I was low man on the totem pole - but I didn’t mind.
After the .com bust I went to work for a power utility - another Windows shop. After a few years they hired a director who came from an insurance company that was heavily into Macs. He wanted to see Mac use expanded but, incredibly, got pushback from his own people. The sys admins were resistant because they didn’t know Macs - and didn’t want to learn. They cited the lack of interoperability between Macs and Active Directory and prevailed - over the IT director!
Then we had an upper IT manager who came from Amazon where (apparently) Linux desktops are prominent. He tasked me with writing a white paper on integrating a Linux FOG (Free Opensource Ghost) server into our network. I knew nothing about Linux other than having toyed with a few distros of Ubuntu and Mint.
I built a POC server in a test lab and submitted a preliminary report on the concept to the manager. He was enthused and ignored my advisories about introducing what essentially amounts to a DHCP server into an established and defined environment. Even though I was green-lighted (by the manager) to put this server on the corp net I reached out to the manager of network services to ask his advice. And opened the inevitable can o worms.
The network manager prohibited the IT manager from placing the Linux server on the corp net and a clash soon followed. I mostly skirted the drama but ultimately got to be the fall guy in the ensuing war of egos. The FOG project was scrapped.
As far as I know they never have introduced a production Linux machine into their environment and that’s the closest I ever came to being a Linux sys admin.
“ forgot the most important part
How much $$$”
I’ve was a (primarily) AIX admin, then Sr. AIX admin, then lead, then architect. My last boss (at a large retailer, working in their multi-billion dollar online unit) was determined to turn me into a Linux admin. The thing is, they are all over the place and a dime a dozen. I was getting downtown Chicago pay while living in Green Bay, WI because good AIX people are hard to find. No way that happens if I were a Linux admin as you can find them anywhere.
My experience during our on-call rotation is that 90% of the problems were with the Linux platform. Specifically, hardware failures. The Intel based machines are simply inferior when it comes to reliability and service compared to the big iron.
I know my way around Linux and could easily get an admin job, but why? I make much more money being the specialist than I would being the commodity.
My current gig is even better as I don’t have any on-call at all, no baggage week to week, and I get to help people migrate to and use the new fancy hardware they just bought.
My $.02
This is true of any job, even where I work now!
I am a “girl” in IT but take full and extreme interest in it and always have. I can see why people cringe when they have to talk to a female in tech. I’ve run into several affirmative action hires and that is it.
It’s embarrassing! In my own place of work, they promoted a woman who is my age to “technical specialist” but she doesn’t know a damn thing about computers and, here’s the rub, has no interest in them either other than her increased paycheck.
The extent of my Linux stuff is to update RPIs running Jesse light every three months or so by SSHing in via Putty. They run our signage/monitors which direct people which buildings/conference rooms to go to. At one time I was grepping unix boxes but that was a loooong time ago.
They hired another woman her who is actually GOOD (we both came from the private sector) and she is now doing the WSUS stuff, AV, VDI and SQL stuff.
They stuck me with a wonky proprietary application and virtual servers it runs on that runs the 911 system and anything to do with Sheriff stuff. The previous dude retired at 55 and got the heck out of NYS.
This has always been the biggest issue introducing linux services in the network. The microsoft folk freak out over anything that might put their server proliferation at risk. Frankly it annoys me no end.
When the first big virtualiization push was made at the company I worked for, it was really pretty funny. To the PHB's they'd see the windows team being able to get 20-30 to 1 consolidations, while the unix team I was on was lucky to be able to put 4 or 5 VMs on one server. We had cases where the only reason we went with the VM as opposed to dedicated hardware was some of the neat things you could do to move them around, and avoid hardware downtime. Of course, what the PHBs never seemed to grasp was that our systems were actually doing things that required memory and cpu, which is why you really couldn't effectively virtualize them.
On the other hand, the windows boxes were all essentially single-task systems running a single underutilized service (often with multiple servers performing that same underutilized service). I always wanted to ask the ones that were so happy with how much consolidation you could do with windows servers, if they were equally happy about all of the huge costs all of that massive number of windows servers that were apparently doing next to nothing had run up over the years.
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