Routes of Study, The Maintenance Free Unix Network, and more...

[Scott Painter_1]

Ok, some of you know what I'm up to by now, but for those who don't...

I've been a design engineer for the last 6 years using SDRC Ideas and have recently found myself taking a job where I have to act as the System and Unix admin as well. I'm at a point where our department is about to grow from 3 to maybe 20 people. From what I've posted so far, it's obvious that I'm a rookie, but that I also can learn what to do. My hope is to be able to leave the design world and transfer into the Unix Admin realm. I have a couple of questions that I'd like to get a smattering of answers on:

1. What books/classes would you recommend I take to get better at the Unix admin job? I find that classes are the fastest way to get knowledge and books are great to have at the desk. I just have a hard time making sense of some of these books without an extensive amount of Unix experience.

2. There is a general opinion of management, that since there are only 3 users here currently, that once the system is up and running, that it will no longer require attention-that it will run by itself with no problems. I say that somebody will need to keep up on it especially since we're going to be expanding rapidly. I need some firepower to back up my opinion.

3. How much time should I stick with this before I decide to try and secure a job as a Unix Admin somewhere else? What type of stuff should I learn? What's the pay like? What's the market demand? I know there are designers out here that say they've been doing design work and using SDRC for years that can't even draw a circle in the system and they get hired. Is it the same way for Admins? With the right books, a little knowledge, and proper utilization of these message boards, it seems like someone could easily get in by fudging their resume and busting their butt when they get in the door.

Thanks in advance for the input. I'd especially like to see about 100 replys to question number 2 telling management that their a bunch of idiots. I have an opportunity to make a case this afternoon to the CEO and it would be a riot to put 100 replys to that in front of his face!!!

[harry d brown jr · Accepted solution]

To be a good admin, I'd suggest taking HPux and ( Solaris or AIX ) admin courses just to get a feeling for different systems and their issues.

Also, perl and shell scripting is very helpful.

Books: The O'reilly books are good.

As to Question #2. No system requires no attention, unless of course it's an NT that crashed and no one notices it for a year or two. The more your company expands the uses of your system, the more demands for more attention, until the use becomes steady and predictable.

Typically you need an admin for every 10 M$ machines, and with unix typically 1 for every 50 to 100 - depending upon their skill level.

Check out this:
http://www.usenix.org/sage/jobs/salary_survey/salary_survey.html



live free or die
harry

[Pete Randall]

Scott,

1. Take the HP Sys Admin courses, get Marty Pontiatowski's "System Administration" book - whichever version (10.20, 11.0, 11i) is applicable to you. This is a bare minimum in my opinion.

2. Just an opinion, but I've never seen a system that could just be left alone. Just keeping up with new OS release and new hardware, in order to ensure that you don't end up obsoleted out of support should be justification enough.

3. Probably a couple of years, pay depends, demand in two years is a guess, etc.

Best of luck to you,
Pete

[Pete Randall]

Scott,

I forgot one - attend the HPWorld confence every year if you can.

Pete

[Nick Wickens]

1. When I moved over to Unix admin in 1997 I had already some background use of Unix and really you need to get that first. Most usefull (and cheapest) book I found is O'Reillys Unix in a Nutshell by Daniel Gilly. Still use this as a reference because my mind ain't what it used to be. Also O'Reilly do a Unix System Administrator book, I can't remember the author and its at my home so can't check just yet. SAMMS Publishing also do(did ?) two Unix systems Administrators Unleashed books (one is an inernet edition but the other version gives you that on CD anyway).

Other wise these forums are invaluable as a resource and I rarely place support calls with HP these days because of the information you can get here.

2. I had the same problem with early management bods claiming that systems admin was a part time job and kept trying to give me other work as well. I have even been pressured to train other staff over a few weeks to cover me as "they only need the basics". I can assure you the perception soon changes when they have a system outage and you are on holiday.

Problem is that the really good systems administrators automate the system alerts so well that they give the impression they are not always busy . The key is to let the computer do most of the work for you but when something goes wrong you need to get the system back as soon as possible and that really means regular personal training to keep up to speed and if you are doing other non-sys admin tasks you can't do that.

3.I am not sure that you could get away with fudging your resume. I have been doing this for 5 years with a further 10 years of IT experience prior to that and there are still many many things I don't know which might catch me out at an interview. I would stick it out for at least two years where you are before considering moving.

[Scott Painter_1]

Funny you all mention the books. I guess I should have told you all that I bought the O'Reilly Unix in a Nutshell book and the Unix System Administration Handbook (3rd Edition) by Evi Nemeth and pals. I'm all over them every day and the people that wrothe the Sys Admin book must have years of experience because every political and managerial pitfall that I've read about has occured here already. Maybe that book should be a part of every MBA curriculm.

[Nick Wickens]

Hi Scott

The book I coul'nt remember is O'Reilly Essential System Administration by AEleen Frish ISBN 1-56592-127-5.

Marty Poniatowski's book is a good source of HP-UX specific information but it is padded out with a lot of man pages.

[Martin Johnson]

How many systems you can administer will depend on what the systems are used for. For static, low volume applications little administation is needed. For high volume, rapidly changing applications can be a bear.

For more than a couple of systems, I would recommend getting OVO (VPO/ITO/OPC/OPENVIEW or whatever you want to call it). It will help you monitor your systems 7x24 automatically. Adfd MeasureWare and you can include performance alerts.

The biggest problem I've had as an SA is full file systems. I can't get management to buy enough storage to stay ahead of the game, but then again, in the last 6 years we have gone from 200 GBs to 15TBs (6 systems to 180 systems).

Marty

[Victor_5]

Taking course definitely is the best way, but sometimes, it is quite difficult because of budget or schedule conflict, in my own case, I learned it by myself, so good reference books are the must, you can use HP training books or O'reilly, the most important thing is keep practising, I knew some of my friends even bought HP workstation at home, another key point is come to this forum every day, it is a very good resource for you!

[Thomas D. Harrison]

I've learned a lot since I started as a Unix Admin 1.5 years ago by studying:

HP Certified
HP-UX System Administration
by Rafeeq Ur Rehman

I've also learned a lot by playing around with Linux at home. ( There are considerable differences but much of it carries over ).

Thom

[Nick Wickens]

The suggestion about a linux box is a good one as most people have wintel machines at home - use a partition manager to give you the best of both worlds. Or if you can stretch to it go the whole hog and get an HP-UX workstation (They can be seen occasionally for auction on ebay.com). Or if the wife will stand for it an 800 series - word of warning though Women (with apologies and exception of any female sys admins) don't like K class or G class systems in the house :@).

I had to get rid of my G series (too old anyway) but managed to get a D370 & D250 for general mucking about at home (When 'er indoors lets me).

[Scott Painter_1]

What do you mean about practicing. What do you practice? Do you do this 24/7 or is it possible to have a social life too?

[Martin Johnson]

Pratice is being able to do shutdowns and startups without worrying about affecting users. Also installing and upgrading the OS, applying patches. Adding/removing hardware.

Those sorts of things.


Marty

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Scott,

A couple of extra points:

1. Get yourself a sandbox system! There's no substitute for having one system you can abuse and mistreat to your hearts contents. This is the place to make all those mistakes on, not your production system! If you haven't anything in-house then visit e-bay, you can pick up old systems so cheaply it shouldn't upset your management however tight-fisted they may be!

2. If your going on a course, make sure its with a reputable company - its very easy to go on a course which appears good value for money, and then suffer death by powerpoint from a dullard instructor. Find out what the course instructor does for a living - if they are 'professional trainers' chances are they don't know enough to answer all your questions - look for courses run by consultants and support engineers. Also check out the lab equipment that will be available - the number of times I've sat courses in 'regional offices' where the lab material was designed for 'the kit we have back at head office' is most frustrating!

3. On the book front, this is one of my personal favourites:

http://www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/show?info.book

It has a lot of info in it on the the 'non-technical' elements of the sysadmins job.

4. With regards to Job experience, I would say *poor sysadmins get found out very quickly when they're in over their heads* Never claim expertise in a sysadmin skill you know nothing about. Perhaps you could wing it at a company where you are the sole sysadmin... but in the company of other sysadmins/DBAs/developers I wouldn't risk it!

5. WIth regards to your managements 'opinions' why not keep a diary for a couple of weeks of:
-every task you had to do on the system(s)
-why you had to do it
-the consequences of not doing it
-how long it took you.

Managers like facts & figures like this - it will help them justify your new position to their managers.

Hope some of this is useful!

Duncan

[Kimberly Ann]

Scott, don't forget this nice "tips and tricks" thread: http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x92a9c8ecad09d6118ff40090279cd0f9,00.html

Regards,
Dan

[Jeff Schussele]

And, following Dan's lead, this favorite SA scripts thread

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x026250011d20d6118ff40090279cd0f9,00.html

You see Scott, there is a LOT you can learn right here my friend.

Jeff

[harry d brown jr]

Scott,

As stated, get yourself a few "sandboxes", machines where you can toast the OS and not effect anyone - other than yourself.

Social life, you better believe it! And it's accomplished by being PROACTIVE. Develop procedures to make your life easier - usually thru documentation, organization, monitoring and writing scripts (perl, ksh, etc...). Don't set up accounts and change password for users by developing a process where the managers of those areas control it, make them responsible for their areas.

Get linux, toss it on a PC. Put BB on it, look at the code, play with it (http://www.bb4.com).

live free or die
harry

[Tim D Fulford]

Scott

I too did what you did, I was a finite element/design enginerer. I used to used Ideas & ABACUS... I stopped doing engineersing in about 1998/1999 since then my salary has nearly doubled. I think that is partly because the Engineering co were bad payers (they have quite a throughput of FE engineers).

As far as courses go, I would say don't expect you Co to spend lots of money sending you on courses, the HR department may start to realise what you are doing. What you need is experience, experience and experience so what you are doing is definitely a good grounding. The usual courses that might be useful (or subjects to know about) LVM, Omniback (possibly) ServiceGuard, Upgrades 10.20 - 11.00 etc, Passwords & authentication NIS, NIS+, Networking. You can cover all of the above in loads of courses what there official names are I do not know, I've gone on about 3 courses in my life and I needed to beg to get those...

Your Boss.... If you have 3 users that part of it may not be too much work but
o Making sure the backups are complete (as this will contain $$$ ?????? I hope you have adequate tape devices etc.)
o System maintainance (crons, patches, removing old data)
o Point of contact for ad-hoc problems with HP
o SDRC/FE can utilise ALOT of CPU and will always cause "tension" between the designers & FE guys. You may need to make sure or even schedule peoples times on the computers if you do not have many.
o If you do have a few computers then admin goes with the square of the number of computers, and people too!

Good luck

Tim