How to Make Sysadmins More Human

If you ask an average person, what does a common sysadmin’s day look like, you will probably hear something about dealing with huge amount cables in server rooms filled with blue light or bashing out lots of hardcore code lines that result in some crazy processes that just fix all computers in the building and solve all the other problems in the company. Well, that is all nice and romantic and probably that is something that many sysadmins imagine their job would look like when they are just starting it. However, the reality is usually a bit different.

It appears that despite requiring a lot of skill and experience in IT, most of the time sysadmins have to do pretty boring and repetitive tasks. Creating accounts for new users, adding and removing them from groups, unlocking accounts and resetting forgotten passwords — all that doesn’t really utilize all the potential that lives in the highly educated sysadmin’s brain. But those tasks are something an IT environment can’t live without, they are the basic needs that have to be fulfilled even if it means using sysadmins not in the most efficient way.

So is there a solution for this problem? Yes, automation!

On the most basic level automation actually means teaching a machine to do work for you. You need to specify the algorithms and leave the routine to something that never gets tired, never sleeps, never makes mistakes (well, almost), etc. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? So why doesn’t everybody just use it then?

It appears to be that there are some concerns and misconceptions about automation and they spread much wider than they should.

Some say that by automating tasks you tend to lose control over them. Well, that is not exactly true. You can only lose control if you don’t think before you implement. There are always ways to log things, to add notifications when things start losing track, to extensively test your solutions under various scenarios, etc. So as long as you do everything properly, maintaining control is not a concern at all.

Another argument that often comes up against automation is that it’s something that would eliminate the need in a sysadmin. So why should you implement something that would replace you? That misconception actually comes from not understanding how automation…

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