I am a SysAdmin - or personal experience and the introduction of open source software in the corporate environment
For 10 years of system administration, I have been working with linux for only 4 years - I’m working really and fully, although I have been striving for this almost from the very beginning. Previously, all my proposals to introduce or replace any of the services with open source software were not supported by either practice or arguments. There was only the desire to experiment and consoles. Naturally, all these proposals were broken against the wall of indignation, “Why change, if it works,” and “Linux? I tried it somehow - I did not like it. ”
There were also “uncles” coming for a lot of money, and setting up something one-time, with graphics, Windows and not really understanding the question - as an example, a server on ubuntu raised in two months (!) And acting as a gateway (iptables), a proxy (squid), a domain controller (crookedly assembled mandrivaDC under ubuntu) and a file server (samba), to reboot which became my honorable duty. And this miracle fell with enviable periodicity.
As time went on, I changed work at work, but without experience with the Open and Free, they took only vacancies where it was not actually required. I’ll say right away that I don’t consider home experiments for corporate ones - I once regretted mentioning this experience when I came to the provider for an interview and gave a hint about iptables (there was a raised NAT and a couple of blocked ports behind me). The result is sad - missed job and very low self-esteem.
But that has changed.
')
With the next interview, a vacancy appeared - a dismissed it-staff and a lot of tuned, but old equipment: servers and services, mainly on linux, requiring updates, replacement and reconfiguration.
The first plus was the complete ignorance and sluggishness of the authorities, resulting in extra time for additional work, time for tests and for learning the same howto; there was time for mistakes, and this is the most important thing. No one will like in a hurry configured and over the shoulder working server; or not configured backups in time. It’s not enough time to set up something in linux for the first time, to get ready personally written howto, be it Domain Controller on LDAP and Samba or a file server with multi-level access rights. As a result, having spent time on it for the first time, in the subsequent ones, the savings will work both in finance and in time during deployment.
The second plus is money. They didn’t feel sorry for them, but they stood out for reasoned and critical things, i.e. There was no need to launch a new service on the old hardware, this is a possible future risk, which should not be taken. With a tight budget, people often get burned about the price of licenses. On windows servers, much more tasks are put than on linux for one reason only - the prices of their licenses. Often these tasks are not related, and this explains the increased load. Difficulties in organizing backups; crashes and errors, equipment replacement and other works will be noticed by everyone, and the bumps will fly only on you. For comparison, one win server combining GW, a file server and a terminal server, against three similar ones on linux. It is difficult to explain, but installing and configuring gateways on linux, linking the n-th number of sites based on openvpn, provided you have a stable connection, you forget about them. Windows GW all the same should be rebooted. The rule of "divide and conquer" I realized working only with linux, where finances are spent exclusively on iron. In my case, it was also a plus that there was a separate large server room where it was possible to work with full-fledged ATX packages.
The third plus is the education of previous system administrators. It is the education of both users and leadership. I have never taken this seriously, apparently the elder wise men did not have enough, but I myself had to go against it and was learning to say the argued “No” - there was simply a gut.
There is always a front line between the system administrator and users, and the management is on the side of the latter. And this line every day, every minute it is necessary to restrain, constant requests for help and strive to throw user work on us - "I do not know how, do it for me" and allow, eventually, to sit on the neck.
And then go on stage instructions. I did not use this tool and did not think that it can work in a corporate environment. Immediately waiting for me another bonus. Not always and not everyone was allowed to push through, but the main ones, if there were competent arguments, would work, there would be a desire. But the next question is, where to place them? Notifications and mailing, as well as printing and placing on the wall (there were such cases), lead to the loss of instructions and annoying on the part of users with unnecessary questions. You need a place to which there will be permanent local access. In the presence of linux servers, everything is solved very simply, apache rises in 5 minutes and in 5 minutes any CMS, for example, a wiki; the local domain name is registered and it remains to be approved by the management. The presence of a corporate portal in an average organization also surprised me comically. And having created a section for my beloved there, I found a place for my entire documentation and configs as well, but shame, but before that they had rested in notebooks at a local workstation. Centralized, with backups, the portal is quickly becoming a sought-after corporate tool. Thanks to him, the user will always know where to look for something, if the administrator is not at work, or if he is busy with something really serious.
Faced with all this and many others - there were plenty of minuses - tasks fell, many and of different complexity, against the background of which skills were routinely raised. Now for me all this is the way it should be, the standard of work. And it is very hard sometimes to remember what my job was and the actual life before that.
In LPIC2 preparation courses, I often spoke with other system administrators. Very different people who do not unite anything - nothing but work. And our topics of conversation were very different from each other, if I talked about personal successes and about my favorite work, about how you can and how you need to work, then the rest of the others mostly boiled down to eternal fatigue and complaints, complaints about hard work, lack of time, for stupid users, for a permanent job at night, although we also had this type of work - the replacement of the critical one must occur during the critical non-working time, and people complained much older than me and people with extensive experience. It’s not sad, but in those two weeks I caught more and more eyes of envy on myself.
What else is interesting, I began to compare the working methods of administrators in Russia and abroad. And the more I got to know them, the less they seemed alien and inapplicable to our country. And it was the work with open source software and linux that allowed me to realize myself and begin to really work.
After reading, for example, the book Time Management for System Administrators Thomas Limoncelli, a lot of things fell into place for me, and there was an incentive to grow professionally.
In our profession, everything is far from perfect, most often the administrator becomes a scapegoat for everyone and everything, although few people understand how and what works and why he is not to blame for everything. I recently began to explain to users the reasons for refusal for any work, to explain the difficulties that may follow my actions. If they do not want to listen, they can easily be sent to write a letter with a request for support or directly to the manager, and this often works. It is clear that there is not enough patience for everyone, but we are the sysadmins, the first people who come with problems. The first and key, without which "the work does not work."
Many of the white companies or companies that work only in it and only with it, can say that all these are truisms and all that already exists. But if. In the small and medium business, the “peasants” still sit, combining, as a rule, the professions of 1C programmer and enikeyshik, and weep bitterly, because they do not want to change anything, although everything depends on them only.
At the end of the 90s and at the beginning and in the middle of 2000, the negative attitude towards open source software in Russia was quite explicable. First and foremost, the rampant piracy - win2000 / win2003, kerioWF, ISA, MS terminal Server, 1C7, XPdesktop - this is a small list of the main software that worked and forced, and perhaps still forces, even large companies to work. Beautiful, easy to set up broken software, expressions such as “everyone has it,” as well as minimal cash outlay, plus, heads of “pirates” with overvalued CSW - this is the success of the it-department of that time. What is ACT and most importantly why?
I do not say that windows is bad, I say that it is expensive and prevents us from becoming really admins. At least it hurt me.
The last example, somehow came to get a job in a large company: more than 3000 people. We started a conversation with a possible future boss and after listing all my “I want” and linux-forever, he asked: “Excuse me, do you have so much free time?” - No, but I want to spend it wisely.
At present, open source software becomes fashionable and prestigious, there is confidence in the products. Access to the latest technology immediately after their appearance.
Many companies, when updating current or raising new sites, begin to wonder if the devil is as scary as it is painted ?, which ultimately inclines them to open source software. And for me it doesn’t matter that the main factor for them so far is monetary savings, it’s important that for me there is and will be a favorite job.
A good trend, stretched for a long time, but good, and I will wait.
th3 3nd
There were also “uncles” coming for a lot of money, and setting up something one-time, with graphics, Windows and not really understanding the question - as an example, a server on ubuntu raised in two months (!) And acting as a gateway (iptables), a proxy (squid), a domain controller (crookedly assembled mandrivaDC under ubuntu) and a file server (samba), to reboot which became my honorable duty. And this miracle fell with enviable periodicity.
As time went on, I changed work at work, but without experience with the Open and Free, they took only vacancies where it was not actually required. I’ll say right away that I don’t consider home experiments for corporate ones - I once regretted mentioning this experience when I came to the provider for an interview and gave a hint about iptables (there was a raised NAT and a couple of blocked ports behind me). The result is sad - missed job and very low self-esteem.
But that has changed.
')
With the next interview, a vacancy appeared - a dismissed it-staff and a lot of tuned, but old equipment: servers and services, mainly on linux, requiring updates, replacement and reconfiguration.
The first plus was the complete ignorance and sluggishness of the authorities, resulting in extra time for additional work, time for tests and for learning the same howto; there was time for mistakes, and this is the most important thing. No one will like in a hurry configured and over the shoulder working server; or not configured backups in time. It’s not enough time to set up something in linux for the first time, to get ready personally written howto, be it Domain Controller on LDAP and Samba or a file server with multi-level access rights. As a result, having spent time on it for the first time, in the subsequent ones, the savings will work both in finance and in time during deployment.
The second plus is money. They didn’t feel sorry for them, but they stood out for reasoned and critical things, i.e. There was no need to launch a new service on the old hardware, this is a possible future risk, which should not be taken. With a tight budget, people often get burned about the price of licenses. On windows servers, much more tasks are put than on linux for one reason only - the prices of their licenses. Often these tasks are not related, and this explains the increased load. Difficulties in organizing backups; crashes and errors, equipment replacement and other works will be noticed by everyone, and the bumps will fly only on you. For comparison, one win server combining GW, a file server and a terminal server, against three similar ones on linux. It is difficult to explain, but installing and configuring gateways on linux, linking the n-th number of sites based on openvpn, provided you have a stable connection, you forget about them. Windows GW all the same should be rebooted. The rule of "divide and conquer" I realized working only with linux, where finances are spent exclusively on iron. In my case, it was also a plus that there was a separate large server room where it was possible to work with full-fledged ATX packages.
The third plus is the education of previous system administrators. It is the education of both users and leadership. I have never taken this seriously, apparently the elder wise men did not have enough, but I myself had to go against it and was learning to say the argued “No” - there was simply a gut.
There is always a front line between the system administrator and users, and the management is on the side of the latter. And this line every day, every minute it is necessary to restrain, constant requests for help and strive to throw user work on us - "I do not know how, do it for me" and allow, eventually, to sit on the neck.
And then go on stage instructions. I did not use this tool and did not think that it can work in a corporate environment. Immediately waiting for me another bonus. Not always and not everyone was allowed to push through, but the main ones, if there were competent arguments, would work, there would be a desire. But the next question is, where to place them? Notifications and mailing, as well as printing and placing on the wall (there were such cases), lead to the loss of instructions and annoying on the part of users with unnecessary questions. You need a place to which there will be permanent local access. In the presence of linux servers, everything is solved very simply, apache rises in 5 minutes and in 5 minutes any CMS, for example, a wiki; the local domain name is registered and it remains to be approved by the management. The presence of a corporate portal in an average organization also surprised me comically. And having created a section for my beloved there, I found a place for my entire documentation and configs as well, but shame, but before that they had rested in notebooks at a local workstation. Centralized, with backups, the portal is quickly becoming a sought-after corporate tool. Thanks to him, the user will always know where to look for something, if the administrator is not at work, or if he is busy with something really serious.
Faced with all this and many others - there were plenty of minuses - tasks fell, many and of different complexity, against the background of which skills were routinely raised. Now for me all this is the way it should be, the standard of work. And it is very hard sometimes to remember what my job was and the actual life before that.
In LPIC2 preparation courses, I often spoke with other system administrators. Very different people who do not unite anything - nothing but work. And our topics of conversation were very different from each other, if I talked about personal successes and about my favorite work, about how you can and how you need to work, then the rest of the others mostly boiled down to eternal fatigue and complaints, complaints about hard work, lack of time, for stupid users, for a permanent job at night, although we also had this type of work - the replacement of the critical one must occur during the critical non-working time, and people complained much older than me and people with extensive experience. It’s not sad, but in those two weeks I caught more and more eyes of envy on myself.
What else is interesting, I began to compare the working methods of administrators in Russia and abroad. And the more I got to know them, the less they seemed alien and inapplicable to our country. And it was the work with open source software and linux that allowed me to realize myself and begin to really work.
After reading, for example, the book Time Management for System Administrators Thomas Limoncelli, a lot of things fell into place for me, and there was an incentive to grow professionally.
In our profession, everything is far from perfect, most often the administrator becomes a scapegoat for everyone and everything, although few people understand how and what works and why he is not to blame for everything. I recently began to explain to users the reasons for refusal for any work, to explain the difficulties that may follow my actions. If they do not want to listen, they can easily be sent to write a letter with a request for support or directly to the manager, and this often works. It is clear that there is not enough patience for everyone, but we are the sysadmins, the first people who come with problems. The first and key, without which "the work does not work."
Many of the white companies or companies that work only in it and only with it, can say that all these are truisms and all that already exists. But if. In the small and medium business, the “peasants” still sit, combining, as a rule, the professions of 1C programmer and enikeyshik, and weep bitterly, because they do not want to change anything, although everything depends on them only.
At the end of the 90s and at the beginning and in the middle of 2000, the negative attitude towards open source software in Russia was quite explicable. First and foremost, the rampant piracy - win2000 / win2003, kerioWF, ISA, MS terminal Server, 1C7, XPdesktop - this is a small list of the main software that worked and forced, and perhaps still forces, even large companies to work. Beautiful, easy to set up broken software, expressions such as “everyone has it,” as well as minimal cash outlay, plus, heads of “pirates” with overvalued CSW - this is the success of the it-department of that time. What is ACT and most importantly why?
I do not say that windows is bad, I say that it is expensive and prevents us from becoming really admins. At least it hurt me.
The last example, somehow came to get a job in a large company: more than 3000 people. We started a conversation with a possible future boss and after listing all my “I want” and linux-forever, he asked: “Excuse me, do you have so much free time?” - No, but I want to spend it wisely.
At present, open source software becomes fashionable and prestigious, there is confidence in the products. Access to the latest technology immediately after their appearance.
Many companies, when updating current or raising new sites, begin to wonder if the devil is as scary as it is painted ?, which ultimately inclines them to open source software. And for me it doesn’t matter that the main factor for them so far is monetary savings, it’s important that for me there is and will be a favorite job.
A good trend, stretched for a long time, but good, and I will wait.
th3 3nd
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/153113/
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