Subj : Re: What's your tech stack?
To   : Paulie420
From : poindexter FORTRAN
Date : Mon Jul 08 2024 06:24 am

-=> Paulie420 wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

 Pa> I was gonna ask you to describe what a sys-admin does, but you kinda
 Pa> started already; so you manage the VMs [and I assume
 Pa> containers/production services] both cloud on on the ground??? What
 Pa> does a sys-admin do week to week??

I have systems in Azure, AWS, and on-premise VMWare and Nutanix servers.
Altogether, there's probably 600 Linux and Windows VMs running in total.

Manage cloud costs, that's a big part. Keep up with system patches,
upgrade server OSes when needed, act as a senior tech resource for the
application admin people. They're typically more business people and
less technical, and most of my peers and I have been around to
understand application issues that might be hanging them up.

Lots of networking changes, opening ports and closing ports as needed.

Automation is a big part of the job, running programs like Ansible to
create system templates for automated tasks.

Identity management - creating accounts for new people, making sure they
have only the access they need and no more, and the tricky part -
removing accounts when people leave the company. No one ever tells IT,
and there are a myriad of accounts spread out across multiple systems.

With the cloud, there are architecture issues - making applications
resilient by creating auto-scaling groups that respond to increases in
traffic, and building applications across different geographic zones for
speed of access and reduncancy.

 Pa> I have a bit of a home network rocking right here @ the 2oFB home - I
 Pa> have honed several skills and always wonder how far away I am from
 Pa> 'sys-admin'.

Home labbing is a great way to get your foot in the door. With Proxmox
or one of a handful of other hypervisors, you can create an entire test
environment, bang on it, and go into an interview with solid real-world
skills.

 Pa> Reality Check is one of the Sync boards that 'feels right'. I like your
 Pa> use of ANSi and IBM fonts and the tight theming that you have going on;
 Pa> also, not ALL Sync boards have a matrix login - its unique... yer an
 Pa> old OS/2 guy, eh??? I used it in between DOS and *going back to
 Pa> Desqview* - I know, I know; you'd prolly kill me for going BACK to DV!!

Thanks for the compliment! Yep, I ran OS/2 at work and ran the BBS on it
for a couple of years back in the '90s. Maximus and Binkleyterm ran in a
window on my desktop and I barely knew it was there.

 Pa> Ooops - quoted a bit too much; slyedit don't let me erase! Thanks for
 Pa> sharing yer homelab; I am IN LOVE w/ Proxmox! I also am a fan of
 Pa> Proxmox Backup Server... have you played around with clustering yet? We
 Pa> might have been talking about that @ 2o...

I'm still in the "one big box" phase of my homelab. The next time I
upgrade, instead of getting one box with more cores and memory, I'm
going to get 3 USFF boxes and cluster them. Ceph looks pretty
interesting, I've seen VMs automatically migrate to another node when a
node fails. One less thing to worry about in a homelab is a good thing.
:)



 
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