This is a presentation I gave to seniors at my high school (Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, VA) on May 17, 2007.

1. Careers in
System Administration
Fran Fabrizio
UAB Computer and Information Sciences

2. Talk Outline
 A Day in the Life…
 What is a Sysadmin?
 What does a sysadmin do on a daily basis?
 Other kinds of sysadmins
 Does This Sound Interesting?
 Benefits of Being a Sysadmin
 Compatibility
 Traits of Successful Sysadmins
 Preparing to Be a Sysadmin
 Required Skills
 Ideas for College

3. A Day in the Life…
 What is a sysadmin?
 What types of things do they do?
 The different types of sysadmins

4. What is a Sysadmin?
 Google’s answer to define:sysadmin
 This is the person or people that takes care of a UNIX system
This person has full access to all system resources.
 Employee responsible for a company's computer network, also
sometimes called a network administrator. A sysadmin's duties
may include configuring the company's firewall, acquiring and
installing hardware, setting up email addresses and keeping the
printers working.
 A job position of engineers involved in computer systems.
They are the people responsible for running the system, or
running some aspect of it.

5. What is a Sysadmin?
 My informal definition…
 “A person who is responsible for creating and
maintaining an IT environment (or some aspect
of it) to support users’ needs.”
 How it relates to other areas of IT / CS?
 Draw picture

6. How I Became a Sysadmin
(An extremely concise history of my past 14 years)
 Left TJ and went to Wash U. wanting to be a
doctor
 Organic Chemistry happened. I didn’t want to be
a doctor any more. I was good with computers, so
I tried computer science
 I was a programmer for 6 years, first at a local St.
Louis company, then at WebMD
 I had to find a job in Birmingham. This one was
mistakenly listed as a programmer job. I learned
otherwise at the interview. They still hired me!
 (More practical advice coming later…)

7. What I Do
 Higher Education Sysadmin
 Department of Computer and Information
Sciences
 University of Alabama at Birmingham
 IT staff consists of myself and 3-4 student
workers

8. Scope
 20 faculty and staff
 250 students
 My organization is responsible for
something like 400-500 systems
 ~ $1.5 - 2 million in IT

9. A Brief Tour
 Slide Show

10. The Mythical Typical Day
 Each day is completely different from the last
 Everchanging activities
 reactive, “helpdesk response”
 proactive, strategic project development
 physical labor
 Teaching
 Working with vendors
 doing the “soft” stuff - administrative, PR, recruitment,
professional development (like this talk)

11. Job Responsibilities
 The entire IT cycle
 Research
 Vendor negotiations
 Procurement
 Receiving
 Installation
 Configuration
 Maintenance
 Decommission

12. Job Responsibilities
 End User Support
 Answering helpdesk requests
 Setting up laptops and desktops
 Handling department guests
 Academic Support
 Setting up servers and software for academic activities
 Research Support
 Maintaining specialized research equipment and services
 Infrastructure Support
 Core production servers - email, web, etc…
 Centralized storage and account management
 Network infrastructure

13. Job Responsibilities
 Other activities
 Managing the student staff
 Maintaining vendor relationships
 Coordinating with other areas of campus IT
 Public relations - giving tours, attending events,
creating department advertising
 Grant writing
 User training

14. Job Responsibilities
 Even more activities
 Producing documentation
 Teaching classes, seminars and workshops
 Annual budget
 Strategic planning
 Training and development

15. Recent Tasks
 Provide IT support to Alabama High School
Programming Contest including development of
program to automate submissions
 Install security cameras
 Upgrade cluster software
 Troubleshoot error conditions on server hardware
 Create system for automating subversion access
and wikis for new accounts
 Wrote a grant proposal for student technology fees

16. Recent Tasks
 Develop system to automate lab machine installs
based on location and role
 Troubleshoot lost DHCP packets
 Prepare workstations for summer research
students
 Migrate users to new email system
 Install interactive monitors and remote lab PC
control software and create training docs

17. Other Types of Sysadmins
 Corporate
 Network
 Database
 Security
 Domain-Specific

18. Domain-Specific Admins
 Bioinformatics
 Computer Forensics
 Computational Chemists
 High Performance Computing
 Most physical sciences have become
extremely computation-oriented. They need
people who understand IT -and- their world.

19. Does This Sound Interesting?
 Debunking some Myths
 Benefits of the job
 Compatibility

20. Myths of Sysadmins
 They’re in front of a computer all day.
 They don’t interact with people much.
 They never get to program.
 It’s not a very creative job.

21. Why I Like My Job
 Challenging
 Hard problems
 Never the same day twice
 Great if you are easily bored
 Always learning something new
 IT reinvents itself every few years
 Freedom
 Autonomy, independence

22. Why I Like My Job
 Academic Environment
 Relaxed / casual, respectful, supportive
 Feeling of Enabling People
 Pay and Benefits
 High salaries
 Get to travel a lot
 Public sector advantages

23. A Quick Look at the Industry
(this slide is for the parents!)
 The IT job outlook is phenomenally good
right now
 The outsourcing myth - debunked!
 Explosion in need - 43% job growth
 Job happiness - IT dominates these rankings
 Competitive salaries - Top 5 of all degrees.
Start > $50k.

24. Is Sysadmin Right for Me?
 I like to always be doing something
different.
 I am spontaneous and adapt well to sudden
changes and new situations.
 I multitask well and don’t mind
interruptions.
 I don’t fear the unknown.

25. Is Sysadmin Right for Me?
 I welcome challenging problems.
 I enjoy installing and debugging computer
hardware and software.
 I get along with all sorts of personalities
easily.
 I work well under pressure.
 I like puzzles.

26. Is Sysadmin Right for Me?
 I’d rather know a little about a lot than a lot
about a little
 I don’t mind unpredictable work schedules
and being on call
 I like to take things apart and figure out how
they work

27. Preparing to be a Sysadmin
 Required Skills
 Traits of Successful Sysadmins
 Maximizing College

28. Required Skills
 “Hard” skills
 Must be an expert hardware and software tinkerer
 Comfortable in multiple Oses
 Install and configure server and client software
 Know how networks work and how computers
communicate
 Script programming
 Leveraging the Internet for information
 One of the biggest mistakes I see young admins make!

29. Required Skills
 Hard Skills
 Linux, Windows, OS X, Solaris, Perl, PHP, JavaScript, HTML,
XML, CSS, AJAX, Active Directory, SQL, Amanda, TCP/IP,
HTTP, SMTP, IMAP, POP, SVN, CVS, LDAP, DNS, DHCP,
SSH, SFTP, FTP, SSL, Java, Apache, Tomcat, MySQL,
PostgreSQL, RRT, Cricket, Nagios, Samba, SMB, BOOTP,
IPMI, PXE, Python, sh, bash, csh, MPI, SGE, Globus, Grid,
Cluster, CUPS, LPR, DFS, EXT3, Reiser, XFS, JFS, Squid,
iptables, IBRIX, Infiniband, Ethernet, DVI, USB, PCI, PCI-X,
PCIe, DIMM, CMOS, BIOS, ISO, IIS, Postfix, sendmail,
dovecot, courier-imap, scp, df, du, top, uptime, find, tar, tail, less,
grep, ls, vi, emacs, ps, man, which, crontab, cp, dump, more,
ruby, c, c++, sed, awk, proc, postscript, pdf, latex, drupal, plone,
modprobe, regedit, group policy, ping, route……….
 The point is, you obviously can’t learn all of these, so
focus on getting a good foundation and being able to
learn new things quickly.

30. Required Skills
 Soft Skills
 Be an excellent communicator
 Written
 Verbal
 Communicating technical information clearly and concisely is
extremely hard!
 Adaptability
 The landscape is constantly changing. Stay ahead of the curve
by keeping track of current development, maintaining current
training, and trying new things.

31. Required Skills
 Soft Skills
 Tolerance, Patience and Compassion
 End users can be difficult and unreasonable
 Put yourself in their shoes
 Self-Motivating
 Often, the only time you hear from users is when there’s
something wrong. The best ones remember to praise you when
things go right, but don’t rely on it for motivation
 Creativity
 Ability to think outside the box and come up with creative
solutions to problems

32. Successful Sysadmins…
 Generalize.
 They become a Jack-of-all-Trades. They don’t get
trapped in a specific technology or product.
 Are expert problem solvers.
 They understand how to attack the unknown in
manageable, measured steps.
 Are very good at time management.
 They manage information and workflow effectively.

33. Successful Sysadmins…
 Think ahead.
 Put monitoring systems in place before the
problem exists. Identify bottlenecks and
weaknesses and address them.
 Solve a problem once.
 Build a permanent solution, not a one-time hack
job. “Higher Order Administration”
 Are often outgoing, social people

34. How To Prepare
 Most college programs don’t do a good job
of preparing people to be sysadmins
 Which department? Computer Science?
Computer Engineering? MIS?
 My choice, and why

35. Maximizing College
Opportunities
 While at college, try to work at student labs and
helpdesk jobs and get IT internships and co-ops.
 Good classes to take:
 Technical writing
 Networking
 computer architecture
 operating system theory
 scripting languages
 web applications/services
 distributed computing
 computer security

36. The End
 Thank you!
 Questions?
 Contact me at fran@cis.uab.edu