Here you are not DevOps: the fate of a sysadmin in a small business

Our content manager, having worked for two years as an engineer and 10 years in IT, usually remembers the Day of the system administrator and the Day of the programmer almost at 22:00 the day before. This time we were lucky - we ourselves remembered the holiday on Wednesday and began to plan the beautiful last Friday of July. In the meantime, thinking - and what is he, a system administrator 2017? What does he do, how does he put up with the clouds, how does he survive among the software and hardware diversity? Gathered, talked, discussed the observations. It turned out interesting - set out literary and with a checklist, although the lively discussion was more fun.


Cat-tube.ru

Our company, due to product features ( desktop CRM system for SMEs ) does not go to meetings at Gazprom and Russian Post, does not wear ties and does not sign memorandums on memorandums. Simply put, we plow - we automate micro, small and medium businesses across Russia and the CIS countries. And then they earn more due to the acceleration of processes, order in the routine, planning, management of tasks and customers, etc.

Naturally, we work remotely - we install licenses, we refine CRM according to agreed TZ, we train, we provide technical support. Fortunately, modern network technologies work for us and hand in hand with us. But our biggest helpers are system administrators of companies. They are cool and different, but they are united by one thing: they are multifunctional employees with a large workload and diverse tasks.
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Agile, Machine Learning, DevOps - we do, but have not heard

If you read Habr, Russian specialized publications, foreign resources, then the emergence of new types of system administrator is obvious.

• Sysadmin + developer in one person or system administrator in the composition of micro-development teams. This is DevOps, continuous development and deployment of software on hardware. It is a very useful thing, it closely links development and operation, it helps to release a product quickly and without critical and major bugs on production. We in RegionSoft did this from the first day of development (which is 11 years old) - even then, when the word DevOps didn’t rattle around the IT world. By the way, we also have elements of Agile and even extreme programming.
  
  
• A sysadmin manager is a person who knows how the infrastructure is organized, but it is all brought to the cloud, so he owns SAM, signs the SPLA and controls the costs of maintaining the IT service. His task is to optimize costs, beat budgets, monitor the number and profile of license usage. Park equipment is most often monitored by his colleagues.
  
  
• Sysadmin carrier best practices. By the way, the best practices of ITSM and ITIL in particular are excellent things that should be implemented in a company of absolutely any size. This does not mean that you need all the procedures and knowledge of all the volumes - it is enough to adopt the basic principles and follow them. The result is not long in coming. So, the system administrator with the understanding of best practices always knows how to build the IT service of a company (even three people) as a powerful team within a team: manages incidents, monitors ticket processing, accumulates a knowledge base, etc.
  
  
  
  
  Sysadmins of all types are not in the spirit
  
  
• Sysadmin-customizer - corresponds to the latest trends of corporate IT infrastructure. As a rule, with the help of scripts, configurators and other technical solutions, it optimizes each workplace and each application to meet the needs of users: from debugging the monitor's color rendering to the designer, to setting up the main window of the CRM system for each employee. The task of such a specialist is to make the workplace of each employee comfortable in the name of productivity growth.
  
  
• The sysadmin-beaver is the last on the list, but a trend and the right specialist. WannaCry and Petya scared the business of all levels in earnest, and suddenly the notions of “backup”, “antivirus”, “keylogger”, “system update”, etc. began to emerge in the heads' memory. In addition, cloud technologies and software web interfaces add tasks that need to be solved. Often, such a person is charged with monitoring the means of access to the premises and monitoring physical security (cameras, scanners, turnstiles, magnets, trackers, etc.). Such a system administrator not only monitors the state of the IT infrastructure, he is able to make her safe and knows how to use and correctly combine hardware and software protection methods, including from one of the most dangerous agents - the disloyal internal employee of the company.
  

Of course, in their pure form, such types do not occur, and so much the better, because in one person several skills are combined. These are strong demanded experts. There are many in any business - from micro to international corporations.

But still the most common type of system administrator in small and medium businesses is an ordinary system administrator . These are the guys who do not have time to write scripts, do not follow the SLA and can not implement the principles of ITIL, because "he is one, but there are many users". It’s easy to recognize such guys - even at dinner, a mobile phone sticks out of one pocket, and another - a short-number internal radiotelephone, which all employees know more clearly than 01, 02, 03 and 112 from another pocket. In this phone - all tickets, requests, problems and incidents.


Home, sweet home

Sysadmin in a corporate environment: hell is empty, all demons are here

The corporate environment, especially not in a development company, is a big challenge for the system administrator. We will not joke about accounting, 1C, printers and shredders, but choose objective factors.

• Users of various levels of computer literacy. And here, the more literate, the worse, because “CRM does not start for me” and “I didn’t touch it myself” sounds much more harmless and more promising than “the computer slowed down, I cleaned the registries, then deleted the antivirus, rebooted, went into BIOS and now BSD. ” The problem is solved by limiting the rights of employees to a working PC, setting up monitoring systems, and logging actions.
  
  
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• Zoo software. This is a serious problem that we face in RegionSoft most often. The availability of various corporate software has led to the fact that each manager can have several programs of the same type, which no one uses. And half the trouble, if they are free, but much worse, if the license expires or they are croaked - you can run into checks at the “K” division of the DAEC. It is solved by monitoring the software and its use profile (SAM), controlling the availability of licenses.
  
  
  
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• Zoo hardware. Then how lucky: maybe a zoo, and maybe a cemetery barely working outdated working PCs. Recently, the problem of mobile user devices (especially in trading companies) and peripherals has been added: cash registers, graphic tablets, multifunction devices, cameras, etc. It is solved by monitoring the profile of the use of peripheral devices, a replacement fund, inventory and timely depreciation.
  
  
• Clients of the company. Directly with them, the system administrator interacts infrequently, but he feels indirect influence on himself: broken hardware, complaints, questions about installing the product (this is in the software), suggestions on document templates, etc. etc. Treated with instructions and regulations.
  
  
• The boss is a miser, and his financial intentions are also miserly. Beat the budget for an updated version of the installed software, licensed software, new equipment, and especially for a network monitoring and control system - a dead number. As a rule, it turns out to be done only by Petya - but it is often too late to drink Borjomi, when the kidneys have failed: greed results in high costs, downtime, vendor lawsuits. Solved by serious planning and calculation of potential losses. If the system administrator can propose a reasonable budget, then it will be considered. A small trick: bring two forecasts to your boss, one is more expensive, the other is optimized. Show how you care about the finances of the company.
  
  
• Generous boss in the dreams of the cloud. As a rule, it happens at promotional seminars, where it learns that the cloud is cheap, and generously pays for such an infrastructure. All problems with uptime and cloud management fall on the system administrator, while the servers are “idle” at home, and there is a shortage of promotional capacities on the common server of the provider. It is treated by discussing the needs and telling the management about how a dedicated server differs from the allocated power on a shared server (price, service, fault tolerance, security).
  
  
• Very generous boss. He loves advanced technology, reads the biography of Steve Jobs and buys Mac and MacBook workers to everyone. At the same time, almost all of the software used in the company can be designed for Windows, as well as users aged over N years. And then begin dancing with virtual girls, Parallels and learning the right buttons. It is treated with estimates for a good software park, monitoring system and licenses - you want to spend, spend so that our productivity grows.
  
  
• Illegal actions within the company. It is not customary to talk about this factor out loud, but if the company actively optimizes taxes, keeps accounts in one hundred shades of black and loves unlicensed software, the system administrator acts as an accomplice to all these atrocities. In the worst case, he may remain almost the only accused, bearing joint and several liability with the head of the enterprise.
  
  
• Very cunning employees with bad inclinations. There are many of them, they are different: players, fans of office traffic for torrents, Picaba regulars and social networks, shoppers, stock moguls and young traders, “just print”. The worst ones manage to steal and sell customer bases, remove and replace memory dies with weaker ones, put unlicensed software on the most evil and loving lawsuits and vendor audits, experiment on working PCs with malware, etc. Solving these problems is difficult, there are many of them and they are complex: they help differentiate access rights, a strict security policy, traffic control, audit of licenses and hardware, and even the abandonment of cloud services for storing corporate and commercial information.
  
  
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• Several channels of communication with employees - the evil of modern communications. Someone writes in Slack, someone in Skype, someone sends sms, calls, carefully describes the problem and their feelings in the mail, especially anxious employees write and call immediately everywhere. This is absolutely wrong and requires extirpation: on the phone and in the messengers - only urgent things, theirs and everything else - in a ticket system, so that you can control the time, resources, statuses. So everyone will be faster and better. And it is not necessary to buy something expensive or deploy complex - for example, we keep the entire tick system inside our company in our own CRM : both in our tasks and in client ones.
  
  
• Sociable users - they will emotionally tell how the sweat came out, when 1C hung, how the printer munched, jamming paper with paper clips, will certainly twist around and carefully ask what you are doing and how to repeat it. Solution: recommend not to repeat and chat nicely with colleagues. Experienced by proven - they still will not lag behind, but the chocolates and cookies are provided to you.
  

User, remember!


Favorite and incorruptible Bash.im (Bashorg)

And again, the factors do not go one by one, happen in batches and cause irreparable harm to the psyche and, above all, the IT infrastructure, increasing the cost of its maintenance.

Checklist for survival in the world of small and medium businesses

We have already told about some solutions that can be opposed to problems, but we have a small checklist of tips for system administrators of small and medium-sized companies on how to make work easier.

• Record all the work done, document it. Best of all, if you start a ticket system, to which users will send their requests for breakdowns, problems, etc. In this way, you can streamline your work, accumulate a knowledge base, easily transfer cases when you quit, raise a controversial issue and, in the end, print out all the tasks, resources and results to management if it doubts your usefulness.
  
  
• Stay tuned for updates (paid and free) - this is a trivial advice that is broken all the time. So you protect yourself from a number of troubles, and users will receive current and powerful versions of their working software.
  
  
• Make backups. Make backups. Make backups. No, they still don’t do them - and for this reason client bases, commercial information, important system configurations, etc. are lost.
  
  
• Do not believe in the friendliness of the world to the IT infrastructure. Even if you are a tiny company, your far from small client base can disturb competitors, which means there can be hacking, password theft, transfer of a password from the cloud system, data transfer to a USB flash drive, data printing, etc. A little paranoia in the work of the sysadmin will not interfere - business will appreciate.
  
  
• Do not use official position in rascal purposes. Alas, we are all human and often vicious. The rule is simple: do not read or send someone’s correspondence in the mail and instant messengers without urgent business need, do not listen to calls, do not harm the Internet speed, do not take revenge and do not try to substitute people. You have almost the greatest opportunities in the company - use them rationally and in good faith.
  
  
• Do not postpone problem solving and ticket analysis. The more they accumulate, the more difficult it will be to get things done and complete tasks on time. The quality of work of other employees and the company as a whole depends on your efficiency.
  
  
• Differentiate access rights at the network level, PC, applications. Each employee must be endowed with the scope of rights in accordance with the position and security requirements. Particular attention should be paid to newcomers, field agents and employees who intend to leave the company in the near future or working on the last two weeks.
  
  
• Have a minimum swap pool. Analyze the software and hardware usage profile, predict wear / end of the resource and ask the management for permission to purchase the necessary licenses and hardware so that there is no downtime. Well, it is clear that all peripherals such as mouse-cartridge-keyboards should always be available, because Spilled tea and a drum scratched by a clip are not uncommon.
  
  
• Conduct audit and monitoring. Use specialized software to monitor devices, licenses, networks and peripherals, check license and equipment numbers, set up a failure alert system. This is great to facilitate the process of managing the IT infrastructure in general and inventory in particular.
  
  
• Learn how to prepare sound budgets. Any head of the company is focused on profit - if you correctly and convincingly justify spending and the need to update the park, you are likely to sign an estimate. If not, then let the first failure become a lesson for the chef - “remove” the deadlines and other negative results and transfer to the manager.
  
  
• Keep up with new technologies, learn. Technology is developing at an incredible speed, and lagging behind them is a matter of a couple of months. It is not necessary to introduce everything that you see into the work, but it is necessary to know the main trends: for example, virtualization, IoT, neural networks, new OS versions, new types of hardware, etc. Perhaps you will have an idea how new technologies will be able to optimize and reduce the cost of IT infrastructure, and save you from headaches.
  
  
• Get involved in business processes in a company. If a company introduces a new software (for example, a CRM system) or develops a new budget / business plan, do not ward off participation, but work in a team and be aware of all matters. At a minimum, you then support it all.
  
  
• Love your work and do not lose your sense of humor - without this, well, not at all. Yes, you yourself know.
  

And another appeal to the leaders of such companies: dear colleagues, a system administrator is not a technical staff, not an errand boy and not the first to be cut, because everything is in the cloud. This is a guarantee of the healthy functioning of the entire IT system of the company: with a limited range of tools, it guarantees the smooth operation of your entire staff. The system administrator and IT service are far from what it is worth saving on in 2017, even if you have 5-10 people and you are not developing software.

And since the last Friday of July and SysAdmin Day have already arrived, we congratulate all the system and network administrators, engineers, enikeyschikov, their assistants, beginners and sophisticated, choosing Windows and holding in the server plush penguins who believe in a tambourine and monitoring systems, different, but so necessary and cool. Someone else, and you will not be replaced by robots - after all, someone must serve these same robots.