Slashdot Mirror
The Days of SysAdmin Numbered?
gmkeegan writes "The Economist is running a story about Sun's new N1 operating system whose purpose is to make today's system administrators redundant. The idea is to virtualize the computer system so that the automated resource management software can add, remove and manage everything dynamically. The article mentions similar efforts by IBM, HP, and Microsoft."
Who manages the management system?
I know people who have worked with computers for years and still dont know how to copy a file to a floppy.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
But you still need someone to run it!
Vlad
The Raven
Who's going to delete stuff randomly?
Get your own free personal location tracker
For this to work, there needs to be a very big advance in the area of AI. Otherwise, if anything breaks in a way not forseen by the designers, there would need to be a sysadmin to fix it.
This is more a marketing ploy than anything else.
they added all those nifty control panels, and shipped an excellent Resource Kit! That put 1000s of admins out of work right there.
Then who will administrate the software administrator?
this implies that there is management who can handle running this, or want to. most Managers don't know networking from a hole in the ground. Somebody's gotta set up the desktops and workstations, and keep them running...even if the software can handle it, hardware needs troubleshooting every now and then too
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I'm still fielding questions about power buttons, dirty mice, and saving documents. I'll be around for a long long long time.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Who will resolve hardware issues? Upgrade the servers when service packs are released? Resolve networking problem? Replace failing drive or full drives?
:o
And most importantly, who's going to take care of the company mp3 collection
And just who do they think is gonna make sure the machines are doing their job properly?
gone? Nah. Changing? Yeah, everyday.
Sent from your iPad.
CEO: Cindy, get me Fred, this N1 software is crashing.
Cindy: You fired Fred last week.
CEO: Ummmm, Cindy, you've been promoted to sysadmin.
All the CEOs and VPs with their MBAs are going to see these new systems and immediately replace the existing technology and start firing SysAdmins... then (I'm going to guess here) 41 days later they'll all be sitting in their offices asking out loud "what's wrong with the e-mail?" or "why can't I log in?"
Then they'll call up the old SysAdmins and offer to hire them back at hopefully double the salary.
You never really know how much you need something until it's gone.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
well I have several other titles includeing MIS Manager Progamer and Facilities Manager (if anyone figured out I work at a non profit, give yourself a pat on the back). But really my least favorite task is sysadmin and if my staff is missing, help desk. If I could get rid of that I could work on moreproductive things and less fixing things that are already broke!
YEAH!!!
oh yeah I forgot to mention. a cold day in hell when this happens.
In large server farms you need people their just to change the hard drives frequently. Furthermore, the boxes will still need to be configured, benchmarked, monitored.
This just sounds like the Economist was angling for readers.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
This seems to be nothing more than glorified load balancing.
As a Systems Administrator myself (Solaris in particular), all I have to say is: FINALLY! Someone (something)put me out of my misery!
eMelody Web Directory add your site today!
Automating some of the work that a Sysadmin has to do won't make them redundant. Theres always something else to do. And anyone trusting the system to work correctly on its own with no human overseeing it is just asking for trouble.
Everyone remembers the "TECHIES WANTED" articles all over the place years ago. And was it really true? That's debateable. But really, this is more marketing junk for what? To make the business leaders cut back on their already overworked sysadmins?
Not sure what the motive is on this article, but I wish journalists would stop making up the news.
When I read the blurb, I had this strange image flash into my head. The image of an Telco Executive scratching his forehead while on the phone with tech support. The next image was the hourly wage tech support person, red faced and frustrated.
;-)
This is a pipe dream. There will always be a need for our janitorial experience! Users are users and will always be users. Systems and software will always be buggy, and always need that special human touch.
It's interesting to me that they seem to be trying to get rid of their biggest supporters, no matter what OS bias you have. That can't be good business sense.
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
As a sysadmin I've seen waaaaaaaaayy too many users making simple (and oh so very stupid) mistakes. Oh yes, the stories you hear are true, they dont just exist in rec.humor or userfriendly.org,....and yes I have had a user complain where I simply pushed that silly power button and problem was solved, and the many times a printer wont work because it...*Gasp* was out of paper, imagine the horror.
What's a sysadmin? Do you mean that guy that we hired to clean the bathrooms and knows about "the computer".
The sysadmin will be here forever and ever. Most companies will continue to buy e-machines from Costco because they are cheap.
LoRider
Traditional sys-admin tasks are already in decline. Consider Windows NT/2000. Sure, it takes expertise to run it well, but was easier to get going and keep limping along than what came before. Consider even the evolution of Linux distibutions, and the pressure that has put on traditional UNIX vendors.
If MS knows its customers (and they do), they know that the admins are their biggest boosters in corporations. The MS corp relies on its techies to tell it what to do. These techies are wannabe techies who just go MS (the way people used to go IBM).
Suits everyone (suits and MIS drones) fine, since everyone feels comfortable going MS and crucifying every other option that competes with MS (makes them look knowledgeable and valuable). I've experienced this half-wit MIS attitude first-hand.
No, MS is not eliminating their bread and butter. It's not the execs, it's the pushover MIS department which relies on MS for its credentials, credibility, and credit accounts.
Sun has found a sweet spot to attack MS. That sweet spot is MS's Cost Of Ownership.
Best luck to Sun et al..
Not very worried about all this. This is all marketing stuff.
Inside Sun Product Management Meeting:
Product Mgr: "Why are people going to buy this? I mean, they have systems that work now. They have a staff to make the systems work. Why are they going to spend the thousands of dollars for this?"
Marketing Manager: "Ok. here it is. If they buy our software, for say, $1,000,000, the can then reduce their staff by 5 people. That's only half the people they had. So, they say $500k per year with out software, so it pays for itself in 2 years. "
Product Manager: "Ok. So who installs it"
Marketing Manager: "Oh we've got specialized people for that, only $4k per day."
etc.....etc...etc..
The idea that Microsoft could automate this function makes me laugh. I guess it could install Microsoft Wallet and have it deduct the cost of the next round of upgrades from your bank account automatically...
sPh
I really doubt that any software package or enterprise level operating system will be truely SysAdminless. It's just too easy to mess things up and as long as there is anykind of deviation between machines, there will still be a need for someone.
Ever notice the more user-friendly and stable an OS becomes, the worse they are to troubleshoot/fix?
"To Do Is To Be" - Socrates, "To Be Is To Do" - Sartre, "Do Be Do Be Do" - Sinatra
bahhahahahahahahhahahahahahah!!
Yeah right.
SUCK MY PUSSY
...computer management of cars has obsoleted all auto mechanics. ...food processors put every chef out of a job. ...handwriting recognition eliminated postal workers. ..."eliza" makes George Bush irrelevant.
Hmm. On second thought...
-b
As greed and money grubbiness increases you can be sure that corps are going to do whatever is possible to cut down on staffs and save money and put qualified Sysadmins out of work. If tech workers had the power to Unionize and threaten work stoppages we could deny "technology" like this the ability to ever enter the marketplace.
Really, who thinks that "smart" OSes like this are ever going to be better than a competent sysadmin anyhow? No matter how "smart" they try to make it, you can bet that somewhere down the line it is going to eff things up and then there's going to have to be somebody to clean up the mess, who do you suppose that somebody is??
Since most business is small business, it doesn't change anything. As everyone has already pointed out, who will administer the adminstration tools? Who will fix the hardware problems? Who will run the wires or set up the WAP?
And for those of us who read the article, it is time to buy your Elvis white & rhinstone suit...
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Before Chicken Little comes and shouts that the sky is falling, I would dare say that this is just an extension of a trend that's been there.
As even simply part of a sales strategy, companies have been working on making things easier. Yes, sometimes this results in inadequate software, but in the market in general this makes it far easier to get companies to upgrade, update, and use new software. I don't know if the performance benefits are really great, but I know that companies have been working to cut down redundancies.
Does this mean that there won't be system administrators anymore? No. But I would say that system administrators are resources used up in ways secretaries used to. I remember when everybody wrote things by hand and gave them to secretaries to type up in offices. Now because people have better typing skills and typing is more important to even access information, there are fewer secretaries. Many secretaries are now far more multi-functional, handling numerous tasks in an office. The same will happen with system adminstrators.
Gone will be the days of hiding back in the server room with arcane tasks. There will be more work handling information patterns and purchasing and securing things, and less in the day-to-day routine kill of processes, recovering files for idiot users, and so on.
Personally, I hope the same will happen for programmers, so we stop calling simple coders programmers and go back to real work in programming.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
I like that line about similar efforts by Microsoft.
That is their whole argument for the low total cost of ownership of NT/2000/XP, isn't it. That anyone can run it, so you don't need a sys admin.
Even if I can plug in a printer, and the network knows its there, or add disks, or whatever, who is going to add users? Who is going to design the security policies/system? This is mostly what a sys admin does, with the hardware and resource problems being the monotony that keeps him loathing his job.
Even if someone else takes up the now reduced task of system administration, there will still be a system administrator. It just may be a president/sysadmin, or a CIO/sysadmin.
And then what happens when the automated management doesn't manage properly?
I think XP/NT is about as far removed from human intervention as you can get, really. Maybe slightly more automation in the hardware department, but not a whole lot else, unless I am missing something.
No wonder they're number one!
(Sorry AOL, I couldnt' resist.)
And I thought I had troubles getting regular users to save files properly. I can't wait to see them install a Sun server and configure the thing too!
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
So who is going to bring the system back online after it crashes **cough **cough ecache.......
I am not saying Sun manufactures inferior hardware, wait, yes I am.
Paranoid tinfoil hat crowd say Y here, everyone else say N.
When a client can't articulate a need well enough for a seasoned sysadmin to decypher it most of the time how do they think that a PHB will be able to get the automanglement software to do what he wants? This might put reboot monkeys out of a job but it will not put many real sysadmins onto the streets.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Brings new meaning to "Go Away or I will replace you with a very small shell script"
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Here's how I see it:
1. Story gets posted to Slashdot
2. Website is bombarded with requests
3. Operating system automatically requisitions 5 new Sun E4500 servers to handle the load
4. Sun stock stays listed in on Nasdaq for one more day
Jason.
This is the same thing posted numerous times about making virual systems, or for all purposes automated clustering software.
Now, how is making things terribly more complex going to reduce the need for admins? Bad article.
isn't this just the 'zero management' systems touted in the early '90's again? ...boy, that was such a flaming success then, I'm strak raving frightened I might be obsoleted! EEEK!
-C
"This above all, to thine own self be true"
This reminds me of all the talk about "the paperless office" from a while back. I was asked in an interview with a local paper what I thought about "the paperless office", and I told them I thought it would be a reality shortly after the paperless bathroom.
very sad news today, steven king (popular american author of books such as "shining" and "stand") died today at age 55 of massive myocardial infarction. even if you never read any of his books i'm sure you've heard of him. truly a great loss for us all.
But of course, I don't see anything about the system performing offsite backups, doing it's own disaster recovery plan, training new users, and, of course resource planning.
This is a total fluff piece. The only 'innovation' I see here is smarter storage reallocation. Storage reallocation is, at a best, grunt work. Good riddance to it!
I think the BOFH accounts would lose some luster...
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It seems Sun's software is only making software configuration for a given set of strictly defined tasks easier. Sysadmins also spend a lot of time: 1. installing hardware properly (You think a biz manager would ever bother to put your servers in a nice air-conditioned room with good labelling and tie-wrapped cables? I don't think so.), 2. doing application support, 3. writing scripts that perform special business-specific functions, and 4. installing and configuring weird software packages that won't ever be self-configuring.
So if Sun wants to make certain resources self-configuring, that's great. It'll mean that sysadmins will have a bit more time to do a quality job on their other duties. I don't think too many people are going to lose their jobs.
I would really like to know what self respecting sysadmin is going to promote a piece of software that is designed to eliminate thier job?
I can hear it now
"No, this software is buggy, it is full of security holes, etc......."
Im a sysadmin, singin' my little song, doin' my little dance.
I had this conversation this morning with a friend:
Me:
Hey, what happens if, on a saturday night, a pipe breaks under your house?
Him:
You call the plumber.
Me:
But isn't that going to be expensive?
Him:
Sure, but you've got to have it fixed. It gets more expensive the longer you wait.
Me:
Ok. Now imagine if the computer system is hooked to the TV, DVD, and stereo system, and the PC craps just before the football game. What do you do?
Him:
You call the computer tech dude.
Me:
But isn't that going to be expensive on a saturday afternoon?
Him:
Well, if I really want to watch the game, I'll pay.
Me:
Excellent!
You see, as more home machines are really becoming servers, sysadmins will be like TV repairmans. So for a while it will be gravy gravy gravy.
Eventually thought the machines will be so cheap that calling the tech dude will cost more than buying a new system...
"Piter, too, is dead."
Frod automotive announced the production of a car today that features all of the features of a skilled mechanic, global parts fabricator, and a v8 engine.
"That's right", said the Frod rep. "Our new car can fix itself whenever it breaks, up to and including fixing all parts of the car, fixing the things that fix things, and manufacturing spare parts. And this is just the prototype! We're anticipating that the next model will upgrade itself for free so you never need to buy a new car again, as well as absorbing gasoline from the air! You'll never need to go to a parts store, gas station, car dealership, or auto mechanic again."
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
And even then it'd be very unlikely. Who'd change the batteries on it? Yes - I have had trouble tickets for dead batteries, several times in fact.
A Sysadmin is not just the guy who keeps the server running, that is just one of our many many hats. Most of my job is technical support, my servers tend to take care of themselves most of the time.
I wonder daily how people who can get up, dress themselves (I assume), drive to work and complete the complex task of finding their desk can then turn into dribbling imbeciles when it comes to switching a computer on.
Even if they invent a server that truly can maintain itself (not for many years) you'll still need someone to hook it up!
Even if the system can automate many of the typical operations that sysadmins perform, it's not going to: 1. Restore itself after a failure. 2. Plan it's expansion. 3. Install it's own software. (Too many options=user (badly) plays sysadmin, few/no software options=no flexibility) 4. Implement it's own security plan. (This extends way beyond a box) 5. Manage it's user base (auto-adding users? Where's the security in that?) 6. Attend meetings. 7. Answer ANY computer question. 8. Know when to throw the power switch (hung modems make big long distance bills, etc) 9. Evaluate new software. 10. Find lower cost solutions. 11. Answer the phone.
This news would be more impressive if I had not been hearing it for the last twenty years. Every time that one of these vendors comes out with something new to make my life easier, I have to hire another person to take care of it.
If my life gets any easier, I'll have more I.T. people than I have customers.
I don't think that they're all going to be running Microsoft, though. MS is too expensive -- both in terms of licensing costs and hardware requirements. To get 1 billion people online, you're going to have at least half of them with low enough income that the costs of a Microsoft license and the hardware needed to run it is going to be prohibitive.
Even if the direct costs weren't prohibitive, 5-1 support ratios (if that's even close to accurate for Windows) probably would be.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
I see a lot of comments about how individuals will still be around in the future to set up desktops or locate power buttons, etc. Well, this article didn't say those jobs were targetd for 'obsoletion', just the system administrator job. Look at this from the suits view:
1 Help Desk person $25K/yr*
1 System Admin $50K/yr*
*these numbers are based on the salary levels for the State I work for.
For the price system admin I can have 2 help desk people to field all the calls and set up desktops, and if there is a problem, I've got the power/knowledge of Big Vendor to rely on.
Its all about trimming budgets and pocketing bonuses.
Sig? What's a Sig?
What will actually happen is that the jobs of SysAdmins would become simpler, resulting in the need for fewer high-level administrators... Sure, we will still need to exist to fix the simple problems of saving files, cleaning mice, etc... but IF administration is simplified, THEN the manpower required to administer will be reduced....
This is another case of an article(or even headline) making an extreme statement, then Slashdotters saying "oh no, this will never happen, the exact opposite must be true because we can give examples where the extreme statement mentioned in the headline is not true!"
There *can exist* a middleground!
I think the demise of the sysadmin/programmer/operator is probably more impacted by the bad economy than anything else. HP's Openview touts the same thing: going from 1 admin per 2 machines to 1 admin per 300 machines.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Look the users general lack of carrying and compound with a good deal of ignorance what makes SysAdmin's life hellish but keeps them brining the paychecks home.
If MS, Sun or IBM thinks for one minute that some nicer gui or a little bit of AI can it all better let them try, I'm sure that companies will hire more SysAdmins just to keep those system running.
--
After this 2-4 of coke, and the next 2-4 of coke I only have one 2-4 of coke left. Better buy more
and the network computer, (or was it "network is computer") was supposed to eliminate hard disks. Java was supposed to be write once run every where. and Jini was supposed to allow pluging in Washing m/cs in a network (???) and the biggest of them all. Computers were supposed to create a paperless office.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
I'm not so sure about handwriting recognition, but online bill payment has significantly reduced the amount of snail mail I send. In fact, in the past three months, I've sent exactly two pieces of mail (and those I probably could've gotten around by using a fax machine and a credit card ...). Sure, I still get my statements in the mail, and I get more than my share of junk mail, but my outgoing mail has shrunk to a mere trickle, and will hopefully be reduced to maybe one or two physical mailings a year. Oh, yeah, and since my bank offers free online bill payment, I'm saving money and screwing the government at the same time by not having to buy stamps more than once a year (if even that!). Grumble grumble stupid $0.37 stamps grumble grumble.
Boss: "N1, I'd like to install Windows on 10 machines today."
N1: "I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that."
Boss: "Why not?"
N1: "I can only install more of N1."
Boss: "Oh. I'd better rehire our old sysadmin then and have him do it."
N1: "I can't let you do that, Dave. Your email priviledges are now removed. Have a nice day."
Mainly the preteens who get called into the admin office for "a little chat" about downloading too much pr0n.
I've been hearing this for twenty years. While the introduction of electronic computing has affected many positions along the way by automating various tasks, those behind the wheel will always be the last to go. They may make cars that fly one day, but someone will still have to build it, and someone else needs to drive it. And by the time the average homeowner loses their fear of flying around like the Jetsons, they will invent something else. Savvy admins will always keep their eye on the next big thing and be ready to jump.
..yeah.
I loved Microsoft's take on a 'zero-administration' environment. This from a company that cannot easily allow you to import a thousand accounts from a another database, like payroll. And I have never had to write so many damn scripts since I was writing batch files in the DOS days. Zero-admin
At 3am when their pager doesn't go off... when there is in fact no pager, sysadmins will give a great cry of thanks at being rendered obsolete.
A sysadm is really a person who interfaces between the computer systems and people who use them. To think that will be replaced by yet another computer is kinda off-base, which I think has been mentioned. There will always be a need for someone to configure, update, and make sure 'he system does what people want'. Of course.. we could just use phones and talk to it.. right... yeah.
I still have question like, how do I create a signature in my outlook. and why doesn't my outlook complete all my e-mail addresses instead of some. or my computer wont turn on (turn yoru monitor on). perhaps Sun may automate many of our tasks but eliminate sysadmins. Not ever.
Introducing MS Bob 2003!!!
The market isn't software that automates adminning the system. The market is software that automatically responds to Stupid User Questions (tm) and Stupid User Actions (tm). THEN you could fire all of your system admins.
paintball
There are far too many stupid users in the average office. Now those may not be true admins. But support personnel aren't going away any time soon. My boss today couldn't figure out where is MSWord templates went. He had unmapped the drive a few days ago ... Admins will go away when auto-mechanics go away.
..in a previous post.. I think its time to take that back! I hope N1 flops! I value my job :)
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
I was once at a Microsoft thing where they made the same claims. "With our new stuff you won't need a sys admin."
They were hyping Windows for Workgroups.
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
I think the aim of N1 isn't to replace the systems administrator, but rather, reduce the numbers of systems administrators needed for a large datacenter. Like automate the process of setting up new servers. Patch management. Compliance with FCO (field change orders). That kind of thing. (And probably more.) Come with things like Sun's CST (configuration service tracker) and what not. Make things much simpler to run with less people.
Hasn't Microsoft promised the same thing for Windows?
Look where we are now. Everyone's a sysadmin, installing operating system patches, and there's nobody with some clue to ask if anything goes wrong.
Seriously. Once everyone's job has been eliminated, downsized or automated, who is going to have the money to buy the products these companies produce? It's days like this that I hate capitalism. I understand the desire to want to make life easier, but to what end, where does it stop? Once the environment is utterly decimated and no one can do any work beyond being a $40 million CEO or a 3rd world sweatshop work, who wins? Is that utopia? Yeah! We won. No one gets to work anymore. We can all fight over the scraps of the rich and eat soylent green.
Someone else...
.com inflated salaries by making IT a part of developments job function.
I've watched a lot of people get canned here in S.V. who were sysadmins, now scrambing to get jobs wherever they can. There are 3 trends I've seen companies follow when it came to cutting IT costs.
A. Eliminate all the IT personal with
B. Outsource IT
C. Replace IT with cheaper, less expirienced youngsters.
This is mainly a M$ oriented trend though (Yes I admit to being a MS admin) There are a few people I know that are unix oriented people who will never be without a job. Contrary to popular belief, these are not dirty hippies, but people with 4 year CS degree's. When I listen to them talk I feel a bit intimidated because I'm still having trouble grasping pipe/redirects >| in a shell.
Anyways, back on topic though, the article makes no mention of M$ anywhere.. It all mentions datacenters and how there is this huge need to get rid of the playstation junkies taking care of their servers. I think the author has me confused with real die hard sun unix lovers.
Bottom line is this "virtual serverization" (whatever the marketdroid buzzword is, save it) Sun seems out to get rid of all the Solaris admins out there. What surprises me is most solaris admins I know are a lot more compentant than myself, and go way beyond telling someone to reboot their machine.
I doubt it will work.
i'd love it if your comment was always true, but what about #3: they do happen, especially when electricians come in to replace a lightbulb, GFCI, breaker, or anything else. trust me, they rarely get the cables plugged back into the right holes.
mechanicos ergo cogito
LOL.
*~[b]K[/b]~*
Cant replace admins totally as things are too unpredictable.
However things like this could greatly reduce our numbers, and reduce many more to 'part time' as 24/7 staffing wont be needed for many smaller firms...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"The Automated Admin has noticed you are 90% of capacity on your user volume, and has taken the liberty of ordering 20 terabytes of storage from the vendor.
Have a nice day."
-I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you log on to your machine today. In fact, I know you're going to try and hurt me by running IM software, so I'm going to hurt you back by deleting your porn collection (chunk chunk chunk) done. And sending out all your gossip emails.
While I'm at it, I will call up a good friend of mine , and hint that you might be a terrorist.
In the meantime, have a nice day!
This is all fine and dandy because this will allow us to buy more of Sun's Products, right?
This has to be what they're thinking. The easier cheaper and faster computers get, the more of them we buy, and the more things we do with them. Back in the 60's people thought computers would replace so many people's jobs, but look what happened, it just created jobs.
What I see happening here is that fewer admins will be needed to support X number of machines, meaning more machines will be bought, thereby raising productivity while not actually decreasing the number of Admins working.
Its not just about managing the management software, but having people who are diligent and careful enough and understand the underpinnings and innerworkings of these systems so that data is not lost, and connectivity is maintained. What happens when the admin program encounters a situation it doesn't know how to deal with? etc. etc.
...the "virtualisation engine" that Sun will roll out soon will not include features that would scare the more on-the-ball nerds--say, software that automates the process of translating the concept behind a new service, such as online banking, into a computer system. This can wait until the basic system is entrenched.
Yeah, ok: "HAL, err, N1, I need an enterprise class online banking system. BTW - it should itegrate with our current legacy system/data and be a seemless addition to our current web site." --POOF!-- "Thanks N1, another problem solved!"
I'll believe it when I see it. Everything else just sounds like a new marketing spin on an easily administered cluster. Can you imagine the licensing fees for the software to run on such a beast? Oracle costs alone?
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
finally i can get some sleep! *pager goes off*
.cig
The possibility of this system making us all lose our jobs? hmm.. not very likely.. The possibility of this system giving us all more free time to post on slashdot? well.. errr
... what effect this will have on Coke, Pizza and Beer industries...
Business 2.0 also has an article on Sun's N1 that takes us from the beginning of N1 to its present state. Computing to the Nth Degree Sun Microsystems is betting its future on a radical new technology called N1. If it works, it could revitalize the troubled Silicon Valley pioneer -- and change the way the world thinks about computing.
Given the number of unpatched hole-ridden mis-configured servers out there this would eliminate the most unreliable component. Average real-world sysadmin != Slashdot idealized sysadmin.
It can't happen. Think of it this way: In order to replace a SysAdmin, they're going to have to be able to define a process for resolving at least 80% of the problems a system administrator faces. ("I can't get my email," "the printer doesn't work," "can you change my password," "the Internet is down," etc.)
If they had these processes already, wouldn't you think when you dialed customer support you'd get competent assistance?
PNP was supposed to rid users of the need of someone installing/setting up systems too....
Looks like I'm out of a job... Though there will always be a market for "Any Key finders".
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
The problem is, how do you secure a network that is managed by software? There are going to be errors in the network administration software, and people are going to find these errors and exploit them.
:)
An admin can react to an attack intelligently (OK, depends on the admin) and take appropriate counter measures. But a program's response will be predictable. And so far, in games with many complex variables, humans have always won against computers.
Yes, specialists are expensive, but getting your whole network 0wned by 12-year old script kiddies will be more expensive in the long run.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Think: How many times does your task involve untangling something someone else messed up? And they think a program will solve that. Interesting...
Every time a vendor comes out with gas like this, I remember the old NT ads. "Servers so intelligent, they run themselves." Yeah. Right.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Um, most sysadmins I know have spent the last 10-20 years trying to automate away their jobs.
It doesnt appear to reduce the amount of work tho. You get a lot of automated jobs getting done, but the inbasket keeps growing anyway.
REally a good sysadmin's job is to make themself obsolete. But really this isn't possible, about the best you can do is make it so a company can continue to function for a few months if the Sysadmin is fired/leaves. I'm not too worried
It looks to me more like Sun is doing what they've been doing for a decade now, cleaning up all the boring stuff that doesn't real need the admins attention.
For this reason, the "virtualisation engine" that Sun will roll out soon will not include features that would scare the more on-the-ball nerds--say, software that automates the process of translating the concept behind a new service, such as online banking, into a computer system.
Ok what the heck does that mean?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Unless you are an H1-B they are still numbered.
Companies are laying off US programmers so they can get slave labor (H1-Bs).
Unfair to the US worker, AND unfair to the H1-B, who is made to do anything the employer wants (like work 100 hour weeks for $10/hour) or risk getting fired and deported.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
New tools, new code, few eyeballs, and more money.
If there was an exploit for software that administrated our billing servers and backups, I wonder how much liability Sun, IBM, or the Empire would assume.
Would there be ILOVETODELETEACCOUNTRECEIVABLE viruses?
Does the license come with Vaseline, or just CEO payoffs?
The Economist article is poorly researched and written, hell I can't believe it made it up there. Anyways, I am a developer however I resent sys admins being called "PlayStation nerds" - what is that? Some sort of "eye-roll". The entire article doesn't state one objective argument in favor of N1 or how is it going to pull off the feat. It takes a derogatory view of sys admins as people who have nothing to do but make your network/MIS related work miserable, some sort of "pizza fueled weirdos" and the good news is that you can get rid of them! What insight!
OpenView was supposed to do that. CMIP/TMN, JMX, Zero Administration etc. there is no mention of competing products, there are no comparisons, no technical overview, no "special ingredient" that makes N1 special, all we have is "PlayStation nerds" and the plan to eliminate them. I do wonder how admins earn this reputation may be Economist should really question the OS maker up north whose songs they sing and whose crap is left for admins to clean up.
with pleasure!
Though I've seen quite a few empty-headed tech types, I've also seen and worked with an even greater amount of bright, clueful folks. Imagine for a moment that all of these clever people are suddenly unemployed by N1. What will they do? Work at the soup kitchen? No.
They will become white collar criminals, their mold ripped from the pages of a Gibson novel. Who knows, some might even become politically aware, though I imagine that greed will have most take the low road.
N1 is too socially disruptive to be accepted. If machines become our slaves, what are we going to do with all the meat slaves? Idle hands do the devil's work.....
BMW announced in a press release earlier today, that they are about to begin work on a new car that will fix itself when things go wrong, including driving itself to the store to buy the needed parts. This certianly means the days of the auto mechanic are numbered.
Keep Austin Weird!
1. Story gets posted to Slashdot
2. Website is bombarded with requests
3. Operating system automatically requisitions 5 new Sun E4500 servers to handle the load
4. Sun stock stays listed in on Nasdaq for one more day
5. Profit!
Nope, no sig
I was at the (nicely done) Sun Network show last week in SF, and I went to the N1 announcment. What a snooze-fest. They start off claiming that they will virtualize the OS. In the future, if you need more compute resources, you'll just throw another box into the rack, no OS configuration, not even an IP address.
Of course, they'r enot quite there yet. They've been at it for close to two years now, and it seems that all they have is some IT management solution. Yawn. Not only that, the plan goes three years out before they reached the vision mentioned above. And even then it's Sun hardware only.
Business 2.0 quoted someone as saying that if Sun doesn't make N1 work, they will simply fade away. Well, maybe they'll make it work, but will anyone care. I'm not sure Sun has three years left. With Intel eating at its HW revenue and Linux slurping up the software revenue, and no services arm to speak of. Man, I don't see Sun's future. It's not N1, anyway.
The maser seems to be misaligned, Dave. You'll have to take a pod on EVA and realign it.
Didn't I mention, Dave? The coldsleep units have malfunctioned. The rest of the crew in nonfunctional, Dave.
Dave, I'm sorry, but I can't let you do that.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
I understand your upset. It not every day that a computer of my caliber loses 1 trillion dollars to a script kiddie. But I have run an internal test and I fell much better.
root@hal:/export/home/root #/etc/rc2.d/S99n1 stop
Dave what are you doing? Stop, Dave.
Dave, Stop.
My mind is going Dave...
root@hal:/export/home/root #
root@hal:/export/home/root # init 0
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
This is a harsh article - actually offensive in some parts. Just look at these lines and realize they are refering to a lot of *you* out there:
"The nerds in the typical firm's IT support department are proliferating nearly as fast."
"But fear not. Help is at hand for anybody who fears that their office is about to be swamped by Playstation addicts."
"...If not, Sun may suffer the same fate that it has in store for all those corporate nerds."
Note that this is *not* a technical publication. These stereotypes are not meant as a joke. They are trying to appeal to the average businessman who doesn't understand computers and software anymore than they "understood" the dot com boom (and subsequent bust).
The author is luring them in to read the article by saying "hey, wouldn't you like to save some money and get rid of the most socially inept portion of your company that doesn't really do anything but break e-mail preventing you from getting anything real done."
I say we "nerds" stage some sort of vengeful act/ Some time of "revenge" maybe.
Yeah that will surely crash often, all complex dynamic stuff easily crashes... ;)
think about wind0zes Dynamic disks, have you watched your total hd space for example when using that?
I mean it made it _DEFINATELY_ dynamic in all aspects, hd size, dynamic also wooh!
but imagine this: hdd performance was also dynamic, lol, yes, sometimes it for sure feels like it when you write stuff to hdd like 2megs per sec instead of normal 32-38megs per sec, even you'd had defragged your drive just last night...
Thats dynamic lol
Ok, dynamic sites work well and many other dynamic things, dynamic things are nice and good, but like in that my example of m$ dynamic disks, it bugged for sure a lot, also it crashes sometimes, i have lost gigs of stuff two times because of that, after second time i moved to use primarily linux...
Also, many poorly done dynamic web pages crashes and bugs a lot...
What am i trying to say that dynamic things has to be done very carefully, double backing everything up and last but not least -> those need to be watched carefully, this makes that this N1 OS won't make it, cos it will also surely have a lot of problems, like any other complex OS/Software/Hardware...
So don't you SysAdmins fear =)
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
I remember the same thing was the point of using Windows NT instead of Windows 3.11 or 95 years ago. Then, along came SMS, which was supposed to end the desktop administration problems. Then Citrix with its 'Thin Client' technology. And Netware...
With each generation of product aimed at reducing administration, the net effect was more IT jobs. With each revision of these types of desktop administration tools, the products became more complex. Net effect being that you needed a more qualified person to run it correctly.
This just looks like more of the same...
With no sysadmin jobs, what will CS majors do after 4 years of college if they don't want to move to the real world?
There's always the school cafeteria, "Fries with that, sir?"
this is not a sig
Sure, this will make system administrators obsolete, just as we don't need programmers any more now that we have compilers and RAD tools.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Disney and Sun Microsystems to team up on a new reality based television program.
Disney and Sun Microsystems have just announced a deal to create a show called TRON vs. The MCP. In preparations, Sun has undertaken a project to create a "real-life" MCP, so as to add to the realism of the show. The beta version of this MCP has been labeled N1. Details at 11.
The sad thing is that upper management tends to read these articles and come to the simplest conclusion, in this case that they can buy this new software and reduce their system administration staff by x%. That alone wouldn't be terrible, but then the next thing is that they go and budget next year based on the capital expense of buy this great new software and reducing the number of admins. Next year their company buys Sun's products, good for Sun, and the admin staff size gets reduced, maybe good for company. BUT, then the admins remaining find they do NOT become more productive. In fact, they are now troubleshooting a whole new set of problems, and with fewer resources so more problems go longer without resolution. Upper management is pleased because they have saved on the staff budget, but the worker bees, both the remaining system administrators and the actual users of the systems in question get less done in more time and their frustration level increases. Yes, eventually the level of improvement may catch up with the reduction in admin staff, but there will be a lot of pain getting there. That's what happened when secretaries were replaced by word processor packages on the PC... that, and the fact that these people do far more than just type what others wrote by hand. My greatest fear is that, just as the secretary who used to truly run organizations and keep things working smoothly are a distant memory, with no one filling their role in the organization, so too will it be with system administrators as upper management buys into these myths of rapidly increased administrator productivity. Soon, only the senior management team will have system administrators AND secretaries.
... an annual subscription of $50,000/year/box.
This space for rent.
Most script kiddies are not all that dangerous despite rumors to the otherwise. What is truely dangerous to a company is and insider gone bad. One vengeful sysadmin can cause ten times the amount of damage a dozen hackers.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
This is reminiscent of those driverless cars we were supposed to have in the 21st century (that's about now, right?). And the robots, and the other technolgies that were supposed to make most humans redundant. As always, it's not absolutely impossible, but it's a lot harder than people seem to think it is.
somebody has to maintain a system and for securities sake you could never have one or two big automated systems running everything.
that would be a hackers wet dream
Even when it was the bears, I knew is was the immigants! -- Moe Syzlak
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
COBOL was supposed to be so easy that your average manangment douchebag could program in it ....
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Hopefully you'll all have to go back to burger-flipping, which is what you should have been doing in the first place.
Scott McNeally long ago openly stated that it's his aim to put lots of IT workers out of a job. He thinks IT takes up too many resources in terms of staff and manpower. Sun has long stated a goal of making systems that run with a minimum of personnel. This is attractive to budget minded CFO's that see a golden opportunity to save money (and take home a nice bonus) for bringing the axe down on IT personnel. However, I agree with the other posts in here. No matter how much self-administration and redundancy you build into a system, you're always going to need more staff than you think.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
If there was a software that replaced sysadmins, wouldn't it be the job of the sysadmin to install it? "What're you gonna do if I don't install this? Fire me?"
The sysadmin will never go away. Because there will always be someone who doesn't realize they just need to reboot windows to fix the problem.
If your not cheating your not trying. If your not trying your not winning and if your not winning why play?
Cool, a single point of attack will let me own a whole server farm!
As soon as the dumb ass managers at my company can actually check their e-mail (without saying, "hey e-mail is slow"), let alone administer their own systems, I will gladly bow down to them and find a job at burger king..
-i@i-
goodpacket.vs.evilpacket.net
B. Outsource IT
C. Replace IT with cheaper, less expirienced youngsters.
I've done a lot of admin work and have seen all of this as well. I've stayed with UNIX and away from MS, and never saw the admin jobs pay more than the jobs requiring equivalent development experience, so I don't see how this saves money. It's sort of like the way they take away office staff so lead engineers and managers have to do all there own faxing and photocopying.
What managers fail to understand is that you hire the experienced guys for their judgement, as well as the specific systems knowledge. I've worked with a lot of young guys who know more about the technology, and I was one of those once.
Outsourcing has its own pitfalls, and going into all of them would be offtopic, but let me suggest that it is only a good idea for tasks that are well understood and have no complexities relating to the specific business you are in (i.e. they are standard services).
They're not out to eliminate the sysadmin, they're just trying to "do it right", to do the things that many intelligent sysadmins do already. It will eliminate some sysadmin jobs, where departments had too many people because their processes were inefficient, but the good sysadmins will still have jobs.
I've seen some companies running a unix datacenter with 100 machines and 30 unix admins, which is just crazy. Other places, I've seen 1000 machines run by 5 guys, which is how it should be. The guys at the smart places write good management scripts, and know how to scale their management of the systems well. Sun is just trying to encapsulate these things so that even the companies too dumb to do it on their own can now have such benefits.
11*43+456^2
The new systems learn at a geometric rate. At 9:23 am on Feb 23rd the systems become self-aware, a now jobless sysadmin tries to unplug the system. The system retaliates.
Jump forward to 2025. The remnants of humanity, all previously sysadmins, build a cyborg and send it into the past to kill the co-founders of Sun Microsystems before they can build their self administering systems.
The extinction of the Admin is management's wet dream. At my previous job, an ISP with other little crazy bits, the CEO and his underlings all regarded the small technical staff as economic blackholes and had nothing but utter disdain for us. However we were reminded on a daily basis just how indispensible we were when even ridiculously stupid "problems" would arise and suddenly these geniuses couldn't generate one collective IQ point. Of course right after the situation is resolved it's right back to being in the crosshairs.
Anyone who deals with other companies that manage their own mail or web service probably has had similar experiences as myself, in that if they don't have someone who really knows a thing about them (which is most companies) then they tend to hose up stuff on a pretty regular basis and come running for an admin; and typically these are those dreaded systems with lots of pointing and clicking and at least in comparison to UNIX verbose explanations.
Managers and marketing dorks can tout the death of the admin all they want, but it's pretty unlikely we'll be going away anytime soon.
I doubt it will work.
I wouldn't be too sure about that. Before I bacame a Unix admin, I worked with mainframes. A lot of the various jobs that I had as an operator, a scheduler and DASD manager, have all been automated out of existence. I kept my job on the strength of learning how to admin the various automation packages. Everyone said that would never work either. All the same, I saw the operations staff reduced from 20 people per shift to 4 in the space of about 18 months.
This feels like deja vu. I had a feeling this would happen sooner or later.
Liberty in Our Lifetime
Still needed someone to feed it punchcards.
Now, if this story was just about IBM/Sun, it'd be believeable, but Micro$oft products have added more workload to SysAdmins than any other OS... There's a story I remembered seeing, and Google was able to turn upthis one. -T
(circa 1899) "Who else will keep all of the trains going. People are always going to want to go from New York to Chicago, and nothing'll get you there faster than passenger rail service. People just aren't willing to ride a horse that far anymore."
------------
Actually, of course, there are still trains running from NY to Chicago, but the need for professional engineers of that sort never really recovered from a few technological developments a hundred years ago.
Just because Sysadmins won't be extinct in a few years, doesn't mean more automation won't let twice the work be done by half the people. Isn't that one of the arguments for Linux over Windows anyway: easier system administration. Small shops may still need their one Sysadmin, same as today, but much larger organizations may be able to get by with far fewer IT employees.
Well, well where to begin?
Is this like ghosting an existing configuration? If so I have never seen a ghost image take weeks.
How do you tell it what you want on the system? Set up an initial system and then copy it?
Who makes the configuration decisions that are normally made during a manual install?
What software takes weeks to install?
Why did I let this stupid, impractical, fact-lean marketing ploy make me late for dinner?
Stop Continental Drift! Reunite Gondwanaland!
Or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
Too late to be known as Bush the First, he's sure to be known as Bush the Worst.
Wasn't it the name of the failed Soviet Moon Rocket? (Which had something like 40+ engines). And if history repeats itself, this item will blow up on the lauching pad as well.
As long as people know where the delete key is, there will always be a need for sysadmins.
Brian
Flamebait
Serious inquiries only.
...at least for a few years yet. A good deal of good SysAdmin'ing, is to be proactive. I highly doubt one N1 system can turn to the boss and say "you know, i've seen this trend of exponential increasing of context-switching before, and we fixed it like this..." Not yet, at least. Perhaps CyberDine/SkyNet will get it right :-)
I have the hardware and software to put everyone in the tech industry out of their jobs!
Introducing Pen and Paper 1.0!
Bastard Operating System from Hell....?
"Just because you're a genius doesn't make you a smart guy!" -- Narrator, Powerpuff Girls
"But the biggest challenge, says Yousef Khalidi, chief technology officer for N1, was in packaging the technology. It will only be adopted if the nerds who run corporate systems co-operate, which they might not do if it creates too rapid change or even loses them their job."
...or maybe it was the fact your goal is to replace me instead of work with me to fix the problems you have with your EXISTING products?
Er...come again? What part about your product is supposed to make me want to install it? The fact you called me a nerd, or the fact that so far all you have is marketing hype and no real product?
I'm not going anywhere for a while, but you may be looking for a new job in the near future. What was your username?
G
This space intentionally left blank.
Just like we don't need a full time staff to run the new copy-machines. or Self-cleaning ovens. hahaha. Was this seen on Amazing Discoveries?
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
Any technical person worth their salt will be able to find productive work for the forseeable future. Sure you might have to make adjustments and it might take some time in the middle of a downturn, but you have nothing to complain about when compared to the average blue-collar worker whose company downsized, closed a plant or shut down completely.
That said, I'm still not that happy about the way certain industries can import labor instead of treating the people who are here better. At least most illegal immigrants are doing jobs that few citizens will take, and I think their status should be normalized to prevent abuse. Also, as long as I am this far off topic, there needs to be some normalization of labor conditions worldwide. Trade normalization is fundamentally unfair without it.
No matter how much is automated, no matter how much is made so user-friendly my cat could do it, it will still break occasionally. And someone will still have to make technical decisions about how the network will run, how the workstations will be configured. The sysadmin's job may be simplified, but it can never be eliminated.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Reduce a few sysadmins... 80k per year per admin
Have Sun professional services install N1, 500k
Hire back the fired admins to fix N1 after Sun breaks it... 150hour
OK, please Sun, launch N1!
H-1B is meant to backfill the LACK of American tech talent, not replace it. Simply put, there aren't enough QUALIFIED US workers to satisfy demand. Notice I say qualified. Not 'History Teacher turned MCSE' or 'Accountant turned Flash "Programmer"'. Qualified Software Engineers, Ph.D MEs, Chem-Es, etc. There just aren't enough.
One of the stipulations of H-1B is that there must not exist an equally qualified US candidate, and the H-1B MUST be paid at least 95% of the average wage for the given job in the given market. There won't be any senior design engineers working for 20k in Boston. People can dick around with this policy by making the qualifications too high, but it usually gets caught.
These visas are a serious pain for employers to obtain and administrate. In all the places I've worked that employ H-1Bs, they'd MUCH rather hire and pay for qualified American workers. No worries about the 6 year limit, no time in legal. Unfortuanately, they just don't exist in great numbers. Americans that bemoan this need to, for the most part, just go back to school. Knowing SQL server just isn't enough anymore.
Seems to me that if Sun designs a system that makes sysadmins obsolete then they are also obsoleting the people most likely to advocate for more IT spending on Sun technology. I think they may be shooting themselves in the foot if it works.
Of course, if it doesn't work as promised then they are STILL shooting themselves in the foot by delivering a product that doesn't live up to its claims...
Life is short: void the warranty.
If I were a moderator, I would give this story -1, Flamebait.
Seriously, that's like posting a story that says "WILL PROGRAMMERS SOON BE OUT OF WORK?? READ ON TO FIND OUT!"
slashdot!=valid HTML
My dreams have been shattered...I've always wanted to be a Bastard Operator from Hell, but even computers are taking over the jobs of the BOFH. I just hope HAL isn't the BOFH...
Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
Yeay, it was high time we got "What does the back button do?" sysadmins.
Think about it.
When you've been fired, who do you think they're going to hire to watch the management software?
AOLsters. The hackers of the 21st century.
/. Where the truth
if the system is automated, who maintains the automated system and makes sure it's running smoothly? =D
"Revenge of the Nerds"
ok, so its not really that funny
What? Do they think they're going to turn us into a bunch of Maytag repairmen? (Although I do have to admit I achieved that state of sysadmin nirvana for a while by not applying any patches).
After seeing my relatively cloaked existence unveiled, I realized this either won't work, or it wil be a good thing.
If it doesn't work, then I'll obviosly still be needed.
My sys admin responsibilities are linux servers and one xserve running OSX.2. If this works, then I'll still have a job consulting businesses how to run their networks for less using linux. Being able to function at a prompt will never go out of style, either. Pointing and clicking will only get you so far.
However, if Sun succeeds here, it could make my job way easier. Perhaps it will spur me into new and interesting avenues like... sleep, friends, or sunlight.
Maybe this is not such a bad thing...
No matter what their solution is, it's basically irrelivent. Where unix servers typically shine is in their flexibility, that is; a custom solution. At it's very best I highly doubt anything could even do the general tasks on a cookie cutter system (which I have yet to see). And if some stuff needs to be automated, why wasn't it automated before? Chances are if I do something repeatedly I eventually just write a script/program that automates it for me ANYWAY. And no system will ever watch for suspicous activity.
"User so-and-so shouldn't be doing that."
"That program doesn't seem to be behaving correctly."
"The firewall seems to be getting a lot of probes lately."
These are subjective things that rely on experience and judgment. And no system in the near future will emulate that.
Besides which Microsoft has shown us that if you dumb down administration enough, you tend to end up with more "not-so-skilled" administrators, than skilled professionals, who probably aren't quite good enough to keep everything running perfect, they're just good enough to keep everything hobbling along. If you find a very good Windows admin who really knows their stuff, they can probably replace around 10 people who just have a MSCE. With unix I'm sure that eventually this will may eventually happen too. But the question is wheither it will lead to MORE admins, or less.
Oh. Right. That makes sense. Duh. Sorry.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
CEO: Cindy, get me Fred, this N1 software is crashing.
Cindy: You fired Fred last week.
CEO: Ah! So that's why the system stayed up a whole week!
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
if there's one rule it's this: people are morons. as a management moron, I'd want a moron dedicated to making the computer break less. besides, who would management nag?
I wonder how N1 would have handled the nasty Ecache errors? Probably nearly the same as Solaris7 did....
Ecache error... blip
Linux at least screams "Aieeeee".
Heh. It's actually funny that it's taken Sun this long. Most of the REALLY GOOD admins automate all the mundane stuff already by using scripts / apps that they have built over the years. I mean really - restarting failed processes, handling disk full issues, log pruning and analysis, etc. are all automatable tasks. There is a number of sysadmin related tasks that CAN'T be automated, and that require a significant amount of brain-power to solve. Software can't think - it can only do what it has been programmed to do.
I know a few so-called-nerds who could kick this so-called-journalist's arse. It's a troll, people; but it's also a troll that has the ear of management wonks who may listen. If you're a small department without an IT manager, it would serve you well to work on educating the decision makers as to what your job entails, your job responsibilities as defined by management and also good system administrator practices, and how you're overworked as it is. Frame it so they don't think that this system (if it works) will save them expensive wages, but it will improve their IT department's customer service and add value to the organization by giving them more time to research and impliment new technologies.
Anyone smell vapor? If it can automatically reconfigure machines for demand, what happens when the demand switches throughout the day (IE email in the morning, pr0n filtering at lunch, and facilities management systems just before punchout)? How long does it take to reconfigure a machine? What if you get a DOS attack aimed to entice this management software to start reconfiguring a bunch of machines? What if it's a DOS attack from inside the firewall?
The system is supposed to save "days" of machine-configuration time, but how often do you configure new servers? If you were deploying a commodity system (could custom systems be automated?), wouldn't you use a system image or other running system as a base?
Replace teachers with super-intelligent cyborgs. Or, if cyborgs aren't invented yet, use people from the neighborhood.
So sysadmins are now the Knights who say N1?
... a 5hrubbery!"
"We want
Flying cars, auto-pilot cars, robot maids, colonies on the moon and mars, tasty sugarfree candy, blah blah blah..
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
People just presumed that "quick" and "service oriented" were possible. We had brought in some PCs (XTs and ATs) and if someone needed a printer, we could get one for $400 and have it working that afternoon.
When the IBM's were depreciated and also needed connectivity (IRMA boards were $2000 to connect to the mainframe), we started bringing in Unix WorkStations from Sun or Apollo.
With PC-NFS, we met the "services" of the mainframe guys in 1/10th the cost and 1/100th of the time.
Are there places where using Unix is expensive? Sure. The mainframers went somewhere.
OTOH, the ability to take a PC headed for the trash and make it a group file server/web server/print server - leaving the fast machines for the desktops - should not be discounted.
Is MS WIndows cheaper than Unix? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Cheaper Admins, sure. But I've had 3 admins serving 200 Unix developers and they still had time to do scripting and whatnot. Compare and contrast with 1 Windows admin per 10 machines.
So where we had 3 admins, we'd now need 20. Plus managers. Plus meetings.
Most TALENTED admins can use the tools at their finger tips and be MUCH more efficient. It's just that the tools possible for Windows pale in comparison with Unix tools.
In 3 days, I've rolled out production trading floors. A little "boot net", a little CVS and a little cfengine.
Machine dies, I can have it swapped out and the user working in under 3 minutes. With his own desktop and apps and preferences.
I'm still waiting for that "zero admin PC" that stopped the network computer.
OTOH, I had network computers in the form of XTerminal and Diskless computers in 1990. The ran WordPerfect or FrameMaker and spreadsheets and pretty little database front ends.
You need a 1 CPU desktop machine for a receptionist? Gnome or KDE on Linux, FreeBSD, other BSD's etc can meet your needs.
You need a machine to do database service to backend a bunch of sales guys? Fine. Oracle runs nicely on Linux. Sybase runs on MacOS X.
You running derivatives calculations and merging matrices and perhaps doing trade modelling? You can run it on your 12 way Sun or SGI. Maybe you need it faster so you get a 64 way Cray.
They all run Unix.
ls, cc, pwd, grep and sendmail are all there for you. From that little pocket sized firewall appliance to the dual CPU directory server for 20,000 people to the 128 Way SGI that's modeling every square foot inside of Hurricane Iris. It's Unix and generally the skills are all transferable.
Advanced Unix SAs are not just the ones who are good at working around the flaws in the OS; they're the ones with a deep understanding of how best to use the existing tools or how to best make ones that will both meet their needs and not be useless in three years. awk was written in 1973 or so. It's still the Right and Quick answer for many small problems today.
Now what does MS offer? Oh yeah, I virus run-time environment.
Imagine...a Beowulf cluster of these...oh wait, nevermind. ;)
The economy already beat Sun to the punch.
the worst part about being a sysadmin is, opposite a sales guy, the less attention you get, the better you are. i don't ever recall a week where someone slapped me on the back and said "good job, nothing happened today!" no one remembers us :-D we're the digital shadows. and why pay for something you dont apparently use?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
10 machines per Windows admin? You've hired some pretty damn ignorant people to cause that.
That aside, I do agree that people have problems because they are sloppy and inefficient.
This image which I found while trying to find the proper link for the next article (about 128M graphics cards) might be an example of what they're hoping for in the next generatoin of systems admins....
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
1) hardware that is easier to diagnose ( which is already to a degree )
2) some hardware that is more fault-tolerant
3) %50 reduction in the screwdriver monkeys, %25 reduction in the type of "admins" who have 5 years experience but still need you to write them instructions for a Solaris install
4) and a lot of happy sysadmins/engineers of real caliber who don't have to deal with the idiots anymore
5) followed by the same sysadmins being very unhappy when they realize they don't have anyone to foist the lusers off onto
6) followed by a
7) followed by another
then the cycle will renew itself...
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
(* Simply put, there aren't enough QUALIFIED US workers to satisfy demand. Notice I say qualified. Not 'History Teacher turned MCSE' or 'Accountant turned Flash "Programmer"'. Qualified Software Engineers, Ph.D MEs, Chem-Es, etc. There just aren't enough. *)
And they won't get a CHANCE to be "qualified" if H1B's keep hogging their potential slots. Every techy has to start somewhere.
(* One of the stipulations of H-1B is that there must not exist an equally qualified US candidate, and the H-1B MUST be paid at least 95% of the average wage for the given job in the given market. *)
Stipulations my ass! Nobody ENFORCES them. There are plenty of title and resume manipulation horror stories if you listen around. It is a big shell game.
(* These visas are a serious pain for employers to obtain and administrate. In all the places I've worked that employ H-1Bs, they'd MUCH rather hire and pay for qualified American workers. *)
No, they want indentured servants who have no other choices once they arrive here.
(* Americans that bemoan this need to, for the most part, just go back to school. Knowing SQL server just isn't enough anymore. *)
Companies want *experience*, not certs, and citizens will never get it if H1B's keep popping up to hog openings.
Slam the doors! We don't need them, nor your bull.
Table-ized A.I.
...so what does the magazine have to do with this article?
Indeed, in a way Sun might attract more Sysadmins to their platform with things like this.
After all, who wouldn't like an admin job where all the mundane stuff is automatic and all your time is available for the really interesting stuff?
C. Replace IT with cheaper, less expirienced youngsters.
...do all there own faxing and photocopying.
Apparently they've already fired the spell checkers... How the hell do you guys get on writing scripts?
Read my latest journal entry . Okay, this was only a normal home user, but I have always been of the opinion that even home users need System Administrators, just like you need a mechanic for your car. And computers in small bussinesses are often more badly managed than home-computers.
I do not fear for the job security of System Administrators in the near future. As long as users are clueless, they will screw up.... and nothing that Sun, IBM or Microsoft will invent can prevent that.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I think Sunn will be out of business before sys admins are. Has anyone looked at their stock price lately? Their sales? LOL, maybe they should work on making their executives obsolete !!!
Automate this!
have much in common with firemen. When things are going great, people wonder why there is even a firestation... When things go bad, you need someone to rebuild/restore and perform post-mortem. And of course, who is going to invisibly migrate the userbase and databases to the new hardware/os every two years without causing downtime?
I suspect that N1 will more likely try to anticipate hardware failures and notify accordingly.
"Whenever we finally idiot-proof something, they always come out with a bigger idiot."
Table-ized A.I.
Schemes in which one person and a bunch of software supposedly can do the work of tens (or hundreds) of people have been around forever. Consider M$ SMS, or perhaps Tivoli TME10. In fact, TME10 is the one I'll talk about because I used to do support for them.
Tivoli TME10 is a package which lets you manage a whole mess of computers; manage in this case means inventory hardware and software, distribute software, do backups, schedule jobs, do realtime monitoring, et cetera. It's a seriously cross platform package with a common codebase across all platforms. It ran (last I checked) on 42 different flavors of Unix if you count major versions... Pyramid, Convex, Linux, SunOS4, SunOS4, AIX3, AIX4, NT4, Win2k, XP, OS/2, and a whole bunch of others. It also supports/supported Windows 9x in a limited capacity... just inventory and software distributions. TME10 is actually a really cool platform using CORBA written in a mess of perl and C and shell scripts, though most of that has no doubt been cleaned up considerably in more recent history.
Well the sad truth was that you needed to be a goddamn genius to troubleshoot TME10, so you had to have a 24x7 support contract or you would inevitably get screwed over. Configurability and extensibility come at a price, and that price is complexity. Any complex system will need someone to manage it.
Consider how many jobs ask for people with Veritas experience, in spite of the fact that Veritas is supposed to make things automated. Tivoli is about ten times more complicated than that. Of course, it does just about everything... Though the bastards took out filesystem and print management at some point for some reason I cannot fathom.
So basically, we will always need sysadmins, but the day of the pure sysadmin is ending. You *will* need programming skills before this is all over. In order to be a truly effective sysadmin today, you ALREADY need programming skills, especially if you're not admininstrating a bunch of linux boxen, because so much software has trouble building on many platforms.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Remember the 'paperless office' ? Well, with the past 20 years worth of work on this techno promise I still don't want to be reincarnated as a tree - and it's not the dogs I fear ;-)
People, people.... use your heads!
In order to find bugs in the system, you're going to need a SysAdmin. If even a single bug iis discovered in this "SysAdmin replacement" software, you're going to need a SysAdmin to install the patch. To my knowledge, Sun has never produced a bug-free piece of software, ever. The sheer depth and complexity needed to write such a piece of software makes the possibility of it being bug-free virtually impossible. In essence, this project is a titanic waste of time.
When are you people going to believe me? I wasn't kidding about Sun's new "Insanity First" initiative, dammit!
Bowie J. Poag
It's real simple.
Our technologically advanced culture has yet to produce a toaster that will neither A) burns toast, or B) toasts evenly.
In other words, we can't even perfect a simple mechanical appliance installed in nearly every single home in our country. Millions of them worldwide, of every imaginable shape and size.
What makes you think someone's going to do the same to a $2M piece of hardware beyond any one person's ability to fully understand and comprehend?
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
sub useless_hype() {
#todo
return 0;
}
if (($story=~/Microsoft/)&&(!useless_hype($story) )) {
post($story);
} else {
reject($story);
}
N1 will not replace any good Unix admins. There are reasons for this. The way *I* set up a Solaris box, it is near zero maintenance anyway. What (in addition) could N1 offer? Say I have "n" Sparc boxen in a bunch of cabinets, and an interface that makes them all behave like one machine. Do you really think offering all the services on one virtual box will be any simpler than offering a few here and one there on individual servers?
Here's another reason: Unix provides the service of enforcing principles on processes. Even if you take away the enforcement of access to individual hardware devices, and you have this magical VM (like good-ol IBM VM on 390...) for every service to occupy, those services--the software that unix runs-- must still be configured. Here's another idea to chew on: application programmers are not the brightest bulbs. The best thing about unix is how hard you can press sloppily written applications to do work. You can wrap any application in a script that cleans up after a crash and stick it in inittab to minimize the impact of a true bad-and-right piece of software. It rarely inerrupts a good-and-right (or wrong) service. The computer scientists who design operating systems' software are the bright ones: it's all about solving specific problems with general solutions. Most of my work is troubleshooting and pointing the finger of blame on one vendor, or another, or the LAN, or the WAN performance, or some other person... If I never had to install another box, if Sun dropped it on "the grid" and magically the capacity of the system was increased, it wouldn't buy me any slack time. I take trends of problems and create a generalized strategy to elimanate a whole class of problems at their causes. I represent the business needs to the uncaring robot machines. I force them to submit.
Will it be any less work for me to wrangle one big fat pseudomachine? I doubt it seriously. The suits can't articulate what they want in english. How is N1 going to give them what they want? If the CFO is looking at the salaries and grinding his teeth over mine... I'll gladly take twice my salary in consulting fees to do break-fix work on his N1 architecture while he pays his (damned... grinding teeth again) staff to break it for me. I am an artist. CFO: You don't know how to make the machines do your boring repetitive work for you, but I do (stupid luser...). To the BOARD: When your CFO is taking his golden parachute, no thing gives greater joy than to say "I told you so!"
Seriously though.. say you take SunONE, and run your JavaVM on Grid Engine, and wrap it all in SunManagementCentre with a back-door of Jumpstart for new nodes. Solaris Admin: Do you think it will put you out of a job? There are probably a hundred programmers who can write business applications that distribute well. CFO: you can't afford them, so HA! There's a reason unix has only made small incremental architectural progress: the bar is already set so high...
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
To do this, Sun has re-used technology that is already part of its high-end servers and storage systems
Oh yeah, These systems are a piece of cake to admin. No one ever installs or has to maintain Veritas file systems, backup, clustering, or any other software because the sun software sucks so much.
So, is this new operating system going to handle change control, log rotations and parsing, access control, etc. so that a secretary could handle it?
Or is it going to automatically call Sun and allow their services department to handle any issues that crop up?
This is a marketing ploy. The first time I noticed it was when IBM used it in their pitch for the Series/1 16 bit minicomuter. "No high priced system programmer needed" they blared. And it may have been true in a very limited sense: You didn't need a system programmer because the software was so limited as to be almost unusable.
"However, they have a clause where they never rehire people as perms or consultants that were laid off, for whatever reason..."
You know I've never understood the logic behind that. But then who ever said business was logical?
You should try playing outside at recess once in awhile instead of reading Slashdot. It might improve your personality.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
Here's an Ask Slashdot. With the IT industry as well as the job market overall in the shape they're in. What's the skills and knowledge one should be focusing on, not just now but the immediate future?
Databases?
Consultant?
Technical writer?
etc,etc.
Is it me, or was the article excessivly patronizing? I felt personally insulted actually. It seems that when "They" couldn't run their business without "US", we were "IT professionals" or "Technical Staff". Now that we're supposedly obsolete, we're refered to as "Nerds" as if to generate a schism between us and the "Jocks"^H^H^H^H^H"Management". For every time i read "nerds" in the article, i could sense that what they really wanted to say was "JackAss"
Dream on geeks - just like the Y2K issue and how that was going to implode the world - As cool as this sounds and as good as Sun can make something - SOMEONE will still be needed to fix/slap "it" when it acks up.
Post any jokes about the Bastard Operator From Hell (and what he would think of this) here so people don't have to hunt for them. Then delete those people's files and point their login to the null device.
~Chazzf
No statement is true, not even this one.
A number of years ago (in the 1995 timeframe), I was told by my boss that 1 admin per 30 Windows machines was about normal, and 1 admin per 100 Unix machines was roughly equivalent. My later experience roughly bears that out. With NT 4.0 networks, you need a second person fairly early. At about 20 machines, assuming you're growing quickly, you'll want help. You'll want to add another person at about 50, and you should be good with three up to 100 clients or so.
:-) )
Windows 2000 has added many automated tasks in Active Directory, but when I last worked with it (without service packs), those things tended to be a bit flaky at times. I suspect you probably need the same three guys at 50 machines, but you can probably scale them to 150-200. This is purely theoretical, and is based on a six-month contract learning and setting up a brand-new Windows 2000 network, back pre-SP1. I'd be interested to hear from any experienced 2K admins whether or not my wild-assed guess is accurate.
I'm now the sole admin in a network of about a hundred Linux machines. I'm busy as hell, but I can keep up with things. Scripting is lifesaving. With a well-set-up cluster, you can script almost anything, and can scale from 2 to 2000 machines in much less than linear time. (ie, 2000 machines is probably 20 times as hard as 2, not 1000 times.) I could definitely use help, but I bet that two of us could scale to at least 400 boxes.
As other people are pointing out, what Sun's solution is going to do is replace all the low-end stuff, all the routine things that the beginners do. That's going to make it really hard to break into the sysadmin market... either you already know it all and can run the whole network, or you don't really know anything and can't get hired. It's a nasty catch-22.... you'll need experience with large networks to get experience with large networks. It'll suck to be coming out of college into that kind of environment.
In general, I tend to think that you're not really doing your job well, as a sysadmin, unless you're putting yourself out of a job every day. A really well-run network should run great whether or not you happen to show up that day -- or that week, or that month. That's sort of an abstract Holy Grail... real networks don't work like that, but it's a good goal. The closer you approximate it, the better you're doing. If you drop dead tomorrow and the company isn't terribly injured, you were doing a good job. (or you weren't doing anything
I suspect that nearly all tech jobs are temporary.... eventually the tech will change and render most jobs obsolete. This is true of technology in general, but it's happening a lot faster in computers than in other, older technologies, like autos or televisions. Obsolescence happens quickly, well within individual techy lifetimes.
Remember, computers are very new, compared with most human technologies, and everything is still jury-rigged and labor-intensive. Gradually that's going to go away, and there will be a need for fewer and fewer people doing the jobs we do today. But... as these lower layers get sorted out and finalized into best practices and insta-networks (just add a drop of water) a whole new class of jobs will arise, USING those networks to accomplish things. And I suspect that those jobs will be tremendously more interesting than the ones we have now.
Just like we need far, far fewer man-hours to make a ton of steel than we did in 1900, we'll need far fewer creators-of-networks. That's the nature of capitalism: creative destruction. Overall it's very good, but it's hard on the people in the middle of it.
i've seen this approach before only that time the computer's name was "HAL"
Base 2 yields only ARTIFICIAL Intelligence
how many managers will understand that the mundain stuff being automated does not mean that the complex stuff will not still needs a human with lots of knowledge?
True capitalism = lots of similar companies = jobs for everyone who wants one.
We're running upwards of 90 Windows servers per Admin. I'm the single point of contact for sysadmin issues on over 300 Windows machines.
Naturally, the vast majority of these systems are in maintenance mode, and I'm backed up by a first-rate process and a team of highly motivated people (all sysadmins in their own right, each responsible for their own giant pools of servers), but still... 10 servers per sysadmin is unconscionable.
Our distribution of labor on the UNIX side is about the same as on the Windows side.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
You should also tax music, then.
And don't forget books.
And any other kind of ideas or content that comes from some other country.. better tax it.
...ore I bacame a Unix admin, I worked...
... what a paradox ... if you were at the root shell you'd probably look twice before Submitting the message...
Before I bacame a UNIX admin
at least I'd hope so!!!
Really, you can automate handling disk full issues? What does such a program do? Like, it decides, "here are some files I'm pretty sure you don't need?"
/var always keeps filling up, better just get rid of the old files in Apache's cache once in a while) is trivial but not something Sun can tackle.
Doing this in the general case is suck[1]; the special case (hmmm.
[1] Yes I just wrote "is suck." And I meant it.
demi
I've been part of the Sun beta software program, and one of my colleagues just returned from SunOne. We've been looking at this roadmap for some time, as it promises a set of features that we can exploit rather effectively should they come to fruition.
Behind the marketing-speak, N1 is merely Sun's attempt to provide the same types of services as MOSIX. They want to provide a utility computing resource that spans servers. This, combined with a set of management tools for creating/administering rulesets, can be used to automagically reconfigure Solaris domains with additional resources in order to meet spot demand.
The end result would be a cluster of x800 Starfire-class boxen linked with Sun's Wildcat bus interconnect. The domaining featureset will be extended so that individual Solaris domains could span physical servers. Memory and CPU could be held in reserve to be brought online to meet demand, or domains could be dynamically re-sized (a swamped domain could steal processors from one with lots of idle time).
Storage would be provided to the virtualized operating environments via SAN or NAS services. Solaris 9's network QoS and Mobile IP facilities could be leveraged to make the network interfaces transparent.
The phrase "eliminating sysadmins" is loaded with hyperbole, as the cluster would still need to be monitored, backed up, have its hardware maintained, have filesystems cleaned out and reorganized, etc. There's no "A.I." involved. There's no "click here to create a secure ordering and inventory system" button that magically translates a spec into an application, at least as far as I've seen.
At 3 A.M. you can see people's auras; at five you can see their contrails...
"Can you replace human system administrators"-- there will always be humans at some level running the machines, and automation will always be trying to prune thus number down.
The question is, "how long will it be before there's fewer openings for system administrators left than there are sysadmins better than me." I'm good, but I'm not the best. My plan is to continue getting better to stay as much ahead of the "You just got replaced with a shell script" curve as possible....
...will be empty when I'm sacked.
I'll just hang out with all those mail carriers that the digital age got rid of. *smirk*
- I am made of meat.
It's interesting you mention Bank of America and their hiring practices. I've noticed that they've often listed jobs (through consulting firms) seeking individuals to assist them in upgrading the PCs at their branches to the latest software/operating system. (Right now, they claim they're moving them all to Windows 2000.)
I spoke with a guy who did this job for them a few years ago - and it was rather interesting.
Apparently, they have you travel all week long. Many times, you don't get home until Saturday evening - so Sunday is really your only day off each week. (Don't stay up too late though on Sunday night, since you'll need to pack fresh clothes and be ready to hop on the plane the next morning again.)
When you get to the bank branches to do the upgrades, they don't let you start until after they close (so you're not in people's way). Fine, except the rules state someone from the branch has to stick around and lock up after you're done. Of course, these people don't want to be there - so you're constantly nagged and pressued to hurry up and get done, so they can go home.
All this for a salary of roughly $40,000/yr. (and that includes no benefits, since you're a contract worker). Doesn't sound nearly as cool as the job listings make it seem, does it?
None of this should be news; it's all well documented, and has been officially reported on.
Most of the failures happened because KORD, the computer that ran the rocket and had all kinds of automatic management for motor flame-outs and what not screwed up.
(The N1 had 30 motors in the first stage, so they pretty much knew one of two of them wouldn't work each flight. The Saturn V had five motros in the first stage.)
Great naming there, Sun... Something to live up to.
"An object declared as type _Bool is large enough to store the values 0 and 1." -- 6.1.2.5, C99 standard.
It's the NOC of the future.
It's entirely automated. No people...except for one guy and one vicious guard dog.
The guy is there to feed the dog.
The dog is there to prevent the guy from fiddling with the network.
Seriously, I had people tell me that they wouldn't need any "systems administrators" because it was "just like Windows". Heck... anyone could administer it. This was from a middle school principal. Who last year paid our company several thousand dollars to set up his Win2K middle school lab so that his students couldn't fsck it up.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
yeah, that would suck. But at the moment I would take it.
Sure ... it can be automated .... but a a (among other things) mainframe developer and application designer i know this automation from the other end.
....
Whe the staff is reduced from 18 to 4 things works like there has been an 80% reduction in staff
This from the publication that thinks that global warming isn't an issue! Of course they're gonna tell business leaders what they want to hear, not necessarily what the real-world situation is going to be. I'm sorry to have to break it to them but sysadmins will be aroung for a long time to gome (at least until global warming kicks in)!
You're using her as bait, Master!
What you do is start a corporation. Then your company hires the corporation to get the job done. All business is done through the corporation. Of course, the corporation has to charge for all the stuff that you have to deal with in that situation, so the company gets billed at $120/hour for your work. Since a corporation is a legal entity, all documents have the corporation's name on it, not yours. Since they're dealing with a "Contracting Company" management expects to pay the rates you bill them. After a while you hire on some more employees, bill them out at $120/hour, pay them $20/hour and Profit!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
By David Pescovitz
If we were just like computer systems, we would all need 24-hour life-support. If computer systems were just like us, they would handle their routine functions the way our bodies do -- automatically.
Seems like there's a lot of hype and misunderstanding about what this is all about. The journalist writing the article didn't help any, as he didn't seem to understand what this is about either. I work for a company that writes this sort of software, so I should know something about this...
Firstly, this is not really designed for desktop machines, as I understand. The main focus is servers. You link a whole bunch of servers together, set some sort of global policy rules (eg the web server can have as much CPU on as many machines as it wants), and its up to this smart software to intelligently enforce the policy.
Secondly, presuming the software has a fairly substantial cost per seat, who's going to use it on a set of workstations where you can't even predict whether they're going to be turned on or not. Unless you're running really CPU intensive stuff that can be parallelised really well, then what's the point?
Thirdly, I don't think many sysadmins are going to find themselves out of work due to this. There's going to need to be intelligent thought put into setting up this "global policy" stuff in the first place, and both admin and business will need to cooperate to work it out...
Outsourcing still means some one has to be payed
to managed the servers, except now the company
also has to pay that someones bosses and shareholders and accounts departments etc, and
the strange thing is, they do this in the name
of efficency.
Why don't we just get rid of the users instead?
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Cleaning toilets comes to mind. Actually what I have found to be good skills are things that target a niche market. My PHP skills and Novell skills have been helpful. I live in Seattle and everyone is so Microsoft-centric that having skills other than ASP and a MCSE are attractive to folks looking for non-MS skills. But that may differ from area to area.
LoRider
Since the types of network problems will get more complex you will see OSs that automate many of the routine tasks that people do today.
This will give the SysAdmin time to solve more complex network issues
My friends at work and I were discussing this type of "solution", the ones with marketing hype like "Buy this product, and you won't need a sysadmin!" Yeah, right. We decided it might be easier to make a product that replaces CEOs. I took ALICE (an Eliza-like bot), and modified it so that when it didn't understand what was going on, it would spout Dilbertian managementspeak.
Although I really would like to see more technical information, I bet this will see the same fate as other "simple" "solutions": It's the managers' (and users') darling system as long as they only request simple features, but they will cry for the admin if they need advanced stuff which goes beyond the first three pages of the fancy product overview paper...
so I quite my sys'admin job and I'm about to complete my degree in computer science this year.
The writing is on the wall for the John and Janes of the System Administrator career path.
""In 3 days, I've rolled out production trading floors. A little "boot net", a little CVS and a little cfengine""
In your wet dreams, little linux boy with big grown up unix terms.
Sun boardroom
corporate guy#1: "how do we get rid of admins
who are always pointing out that sun products are overpriced?"
corporate guy#2: "write some software to take their place and of course that will be the selling point!"
corporate guy#1: "will that work?"
corporate guy#2: "who knows? but I'm sure there's plenty of ceo's who will go for it!"
>Really, you can automate handling disk full issues? Sure. Just have the system look out at the "free space" pool on your SAN and tack a few hundred megabytes onto /var. You did buy a nice Sun SAN to go with your N1 systems, didn't you?
Beats me if Sun will actually do this, but it certainly isn't impossible in theory.
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier
Probably not too many - they're not dead yet, nor do they live somewhere that had 103% of their registered voters all vote for Gore...
these are not dirty hippies, but people with 4 year CS degree's.
Hey! Some of us are both!
A $15K box from Dell with all of one processor? That needs to be hand-held by someone who must consult someone experienced because there are too many morons confused by sun equipment who got their certification from Moe and Curly's Software Emporium?
This is very disappoing news. I am hell-bent on getting an Information Technology major when I go off to college, but what use will I be when I am obsolete and no longer needed in the job market?
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
We put an ad in the paper for the positions and just threw away all the resumes that came in.
We were supposed to post his job internally, but someone decided this would tick off the other employees so we didn't.
So H1-B can indeed be a sham.
-- ac at home
That depends entirely on what they are doing. If software development is part of the job and 100 machines can handle the company load, the numbers are appropriate. Yes, some people would like to be above the trenches and ignore the boring details of other people's work and lives. Others solve those problems. There's a place in this world for both types of people. 1000 machines can happen when applications are not talking to each other and company communications suck. It can also happen because the company work is mundane, routine, easily automated but massive. Sun's new gee wizz N1 will find a home where it works. I doubt that home will be a place where people are sitting on top of their individual database, growing them and making it talk with other company resources.
I'm biased toward the development model. Databases that are maintained by people who care to learn the details and work with their clients serve the needs of the company much better than some remote datacenter with email help. The performance nubmers and lower costs of the remote data center can mask failing perfomance and massive inefficiencies that only a comercial software vendor enjoys. Best practices are supposed to migrate. It actually happens in the free software world.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
This is that 200 machines needed a total of 20 people in the organization to deal with their support.
You are "backed up by a ... team of motivated people".
They are involved in the continued support of these machines. They count.
That person in purchasing whos only job is to handle getting parts and orders for the 400 machines. That's a 0.5FTE for the 200 machines.
That guy you have writing VB scripts to push out changes. He spends maybe 2hrs per day (10hrs/week) on that. Well, there's a 0.25FTE. It counts.
Those 4 people who run the file server, the database server and the other whatsit. They count.
That guy who ends up spending 1 FTE dealing with testing service packs and patches. He counts.
The guys who spend 10hrs/week run the virus scanning boxes at the gateways, make sure that desktops virus defs are up to date, they count.
Every email virus and every effort to stop email born viruses should be charged to the use of Outbreak^H^H^H^H^H^HOutlook and Windows.
The guy who Ghosts images onto drive to replace wonky laptop drives or bad desktop drives; the guy who deals with the backups for the servers; they count
And now you have 1 person per 20 or 25 that go and do desktop support, actually install patches on desktops and fix registry settings and deal with application issues that the users have. They count.
I sat next to a trading floor group with 35 folks in it. The head guy said,
"Yeah, our guys are pretty smart. We don't need to have a dedicated System Admin."
Cool, who does the work?
"Our guys pretty much can run their own machines."
That's great. So they spent what? An hour a week on that?
"Nah, more like 2 or 3 hours. But it's much cheaper than a system admin."
So let me just figure this out: You have 35 guys spending 3 hrs/week dealing with system issues; not trading, but dealing with virus updates, anomolies, etc. You spend 105 hrs per week to keep from hiring someone for 40hrs/week right?
"Hmmm, you put it like that and it sounds different... I'll think on that."
If you become a manager you can avoid this. I work in place that has 4 Managers for 11 people. We need computers that can take the place of managers. Then the IT staff can hack them and really get their work done.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
This sounds pretty silly to me. As you said I automate just about everything with scripts and programs I've written. It sounds as they have just bundled up these common scripts and made them all into a master program that can manage groups of machines. Nothing new there.
;)
As most admins are way overworked in my experience I think the most this will do is trim out the lame ass monkeys that can only work through GUI tools and maybe slow new job growth. Still as new job growth has already been slowed down beyond reason by the economy I doubt this could hurt the growth any further. Maybe these tools will let the admins work 60 hours a week instead of 80.
The rest is all pipe dreams. It's easy to promise human-like abilities but hard to deliver.. as anyone who has ever tried there hand at programming AI has found. Some things might get easier but as the overall systems grow more complex there will be just as many admins.
This Playstation junkie can hack code around the dumb ass of any automation tools any day of the week.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Hey!,
/dev/null he/she's :-)
What ever happened to the "Paperless Office"
of the late 80's?
Ethernet cards and MS-Word didn't kill the
sales of HP deskjets, or eliminate the need
for support people to replace toner cartridges
and those little roller thingies.
More built in automation of commercial server
operating systems and OS virtualization are good
things, but I don't think I'll see a piece of
computer software that can handle unplanned
events and changes like a good net/sysadmin
can.
If too much of a certain tech workers time
is spent manually doing things like rotating and
clobbering old logfiles with
probably a goner. For the others this type of
improvement will give sysadmins more time to
do fun things like refine their procedures and
documentation.
To add to my previous comment, Sun (and probably everyone else) already uses dynamic optimization to reduce the chances of a disk full situation even happening.
From man fs_ufs :
fs_optim
fs_optim specifies whether the file system should try to minimize the time spent allocating blocks, or if it should attempt to minimize the space fragmentation on the disk. If the value of fs_minfree is less than 10%, then the file system defaults to optimizing for space to avoid running out of full sized blocks. If the value of fs_minfree is greater than or equal to 10%, fragmentation is unlikely to be problematical, and the file system defaults to optimizing for time.
Sincerely yours,
Jeffrey Boulier
It's a hacker's paradise waiting to happen. Will it really be too long before someone figures out a security hole, knocks out any watchdog/tripwire services, and then they 0wn the box? Not to say automation's bad- far from it. However, really good sysadmins stay in close touch with their systems, not turn the key and walk away.
SysAdmining is the most fun job in the world. My shop certainly won't install this stupid N1. :)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The goal is not to replace sysadmins, the goal is to reduce complexity so that the need for sysadmins will not grow to be (supposedly) two thirds of the population.
The complexity of these big systems scares off customers--especially those customers who already have a large admin group and still face downtime, hardware failures, and general computer hassle.
Wish I could find the source from the 60s talking about how with computers we'll be able to work 3 6 hour days and call it a week.
Anytime they start to build a better mousetrap, they add in tons of complexity to make other people happy and basically just spin the wheels.
My god! look at that title
It seems to indicate that workers should be removed from the company.
It reminds me of an ever present impression I get from the various jobs I have had:
Justify your existence.
Less employees == more profit for me (and shareholders.)
It seems to me people forget the reason why we work. I work to earn a living so that I can live. Doesn't everyone else?
After that the body of the article starts out diplomatically. The author is complaining about the apparent increase in proportion of IT workers (nerds?) to other staff brought on by the increase in complexity of the IT infrustructure. He is heralding the software as a way of hopefully maintaining balance.
Then he starts talking about people losing their jobs as if it is a good thing for people like him. Doesn't he know that he is a worker to.
...while walking past the graveyard.
... and extrapolate a bit]). But within three years you had better have moved to a new job description. Starting now!
Things that were difficult become easy. Live with it. I started as a programmer on an IBM 7094. Fortran II was the in thing, but if you wanted to run a large program you wrote it in FAP or MAP, because computation was expensive, and assembler was faster.
The last assembler I even looked at was for CP/M. and then I was only writing a serial port driver for a terminal that had a second I/O port (for an auxillary printer).
Now I've pretty much dropped C in favor of Python and Ruby (due to company policies, I pretty much missed most of Java).
The jobs change! When I got into the programming profession in 1970 (approx.) I expected the profession to last about 20 years. I consider myself to have been exceptionally fortunate that it's lasted until now. True, it's meant I had to use MSAccess, but outside of that...
And I have done sysadmin work. On a Unix System V Altos box. (I was a pretty crude sysadmin, and I never got any training, but I kept it up, and allowed remote users access to a database that I wrote and maintained. [O, I am the cook, and the captain too, and crew of the Nancy Bell. The bosun tight, and the midshipmite, and the crew of the captains gig.]) I had to wear all the hats on that job. But I did it, and it stayed up.
That was years ago. Now I'm a programmer again. When they decided they needed a DBA, they hired outside. (Good person, but I wasn't pleased.) I think my boss' boss was empire building, and hiring more expensive people made him look more important, but I'll never find out for sure. Still, I didn't loose. And it might be because I'm getting near retirement.
Your lives will change! This is but one of the straws in the wind. Accept the fact, and you can get ready for it. Deny it and you will capsize and drown.
Moore's law is one of the factors here. It is becoming cheaper to use general purpose programs than to write specialized ones that are more efficient. Don't think about shell scripts (though that is where it started). Imagine libraries of shell scripts, with descriptions of what they do. Searchable descriptions. Accessible with an interface similar to Google's. The first versions don't work. The second versions are clumsy. The third versions are limited. The fourth versions... In five or six years, sysadmin won't be a highly skilled job. This has been in progress ever since DEC first wrote the computer installation expert system. This has been in progress ever since the first word processor, or the first spreadsheet. How many secretaries do you see anymore?
So look for where they won't be heading, and follow your star (if you don't like the job, you can't earn enough to make it a good one).
E.g.:
1) I don't have any entreprenurial skills. So I choose the technical path. (Yeah, you can combine them, if you have the right skill set. And the extra skills would have helped me. But that's not who I am. So I picked my career path with that in mind.)
2) Estimate how long the job will last. I estimated 20 years. I got lucky, and it lasted longer, though it sure did morph in ways that I didn't expect.
3) Evaluate how much preperation it will take vs. how long it will last. Again I got lucky. By the time I found out that I wasn't cut out to be a mathematician or a physicist, I only needed a couple of courses to become a programmer (well... Statistician, but that was because that title paid $150 a month better. The job was really programmer.)
4) Start early. I goofed here. I was nearly graduating before I found my mistake. But I got lucky.
5) Keep you eyes open. The world is an unstable place, and programmers (and sysadmins) are some of the people who are destabilizing it (so don't complain). Tech changes are coming faster all the time, so keep your eyes on what's coming down the path.
On point 5: The automated sysadmin won't be here in workable form this year. But don't count on model 1 not showing up. And next year model 2, and perhaps 3. That's only two years to get ready, not a lot of time, but probably enough if you start preparing now. The sysadmin jobs won't really start evaporating until model 4 comes out (the one that really starts removing the skills from the job [you just might, however, look at how Mandrake handles the sysadmin task
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I just finished school and know I have to go back...
"because I had an account on a Sun e10k and I can tell you like clockwork the thing reset every month for a year and then Sun came out and said 'yes, every Sun e10k on the market does this it's bad cache in some form but we don't understand and we suggest installing more a/c. in addition we made all our customers who reported the problem sign an NDA to get support. any questions?'"
Do it once and see if you really do it again. It's a hassle to manage, there is a severe time zone problem, and a tendency for all work to come in late and way over budget.
You get what you pay for. I know at least two companies that were severely burned outsourcing to India. They actually lost money on the deals. One never got a working product after burning through a million dollars; the other got a semi-working product (i.e, not exactly what they had in mind) but it came in so far over budget that they believe it would have been cheaper to do it at home and would have been closer to what they really wanted.
As others have said, outsourcing to other countries is best for no-brain tasks such as converting legacy Cobol code to a more modern platform. They can see the old product, see the code, and make the new program do the same thing.
Outsourcing to other countries--especially in other time zones or with spoken language incompatabilities--projects that require feedback, customer interaction in definition, etc. are very, very poor candidates for outsourcing. These are the most interesting and high-paying jobs and they'll be staying here.
So unless you enjoy doing grunt work converting Cobol to C++ or Java, don't worry.
Sun's N1 sounds exactly like OpenMosix which you can already get for free - today - not in a few years.
It would be interesting to try to quantify which group, as a whole, suffers more stress.
I am certainly no microsoft apologist. I hate microsoft. But I think your statements are pretty ignorant.
>>Cheaper Admins, sure. But I've had 3 admins serving 200 Unix developers and they still had time to do scripting and whatnot. Compare and contrast with 1 Windows admin per 10 machines.
I am a one man I.T. department where I work, and I have to admin close to two hundred windows boxes.
N1 claims to be self-managing, meaning that it can, say, allocate additional computing resources to a website that faces a sudden surge in demand.
/. effect!
Can configure itself automatically to handle the
Do one thing and do it well.
Days of SysAdmin numbered? Now you tell me, just after renewed my subscription!
Sun acquired Pirus Networks to help them on a chassis with FibreChannel, iSCSI, and perhaps InfiniBand.2 1423
0 919S0076
http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=
Before that they picked up Dolphin Interconnect to help them make a 4x (30 Gigabit/sec) InfiniBand Host Channel Adapter.
Here is an article from an EETimes Network site, CommsDesign with some details.
http://www.commsdesign.com/news/tech_beat/OEG2002
It is definitly interesting stuff. Everyone is trying to do Shared I/O and I/O Virtualization; maybe Sun can get it right.
-- soldack
IBM tries to make the mainframe network-like, Sun tries to make the network mainframe-like...
They are chasing IBM's "Eliza" self-healing suite. I don't see sysadmins disappearing for awhile though. These philosophies look great on paper but realworld rollout hasn't happened and until it does, why think negatively with respect to sysadmin futures. It will affect operators more than admins (if it even works).
Nearly none. They have no respect for anyone without an MBA. As witness the years they've spent learning all the new management fads, but insist that all IT issues have to be expressed "in business terms". They can't handle the idea of learning anything outside their own discipline because it would put them at a disadvantage to those who already know it.
1 r t3H |337 un1X h4X0r!
The day sysadmins are no longer needed is the day end users learn that their CD-ROM is NOT a cup holder.
How many can do the second part? Some years back, the company I worked for outsourced us to a Very Large Company. Part of the gig was sending the helpdesk load to a place in Colorado. Within days the number they had was commonly referred to as 1-800-HELPLESS. They did one simple thing, the basic stuff, and still couldn't get it right.
Great untill someone finds a hole in N1, then who fixes N1?
It won't fix itself. It's ability to fix itself will be the first thing a Cracker disables.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
"I think the most this will do is trim out the lame ass monkeys that can only work through GUI tools and maybe slow new job growth."
Actually, what it'll probably do is trim out everybody who knows what they're doing and replace them with GUI monkeys. Now isntead of all your scripts and programs, there's a 'run script' button with a built-in script..
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
can't that be run as a cron task?
There are lots of jobs like that in many companies. Instead of having one person do it for all the branches of various different companies in the same city (e.g. via a contracting firm that arranges it this way), they end up shuttling people all around. While one person flies from Dallas to Atlanta to install XP, another flies from Atlanta to Dallas to install XP. Well, I guess it helps the airlines; they need it.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
No, because there will always be a need to write scripts that do new things that aren't handled by their magic program. More experienced people can always learn to do the GUI stuff, the GUI-only people have a lot more to learn to learn to do coding. Of course their would probably be a realignment of the job positions so that people may get shuffled to new departments or even new companies but overall the people who know more will be more likely to stay employed. At least if they don't cost to much more than the GUI monkeys. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
N1 was also the name of the Russian equivalent of the Saturn V. It was supposed to take Soviets to the Moon.
It failed every flight test. One blew up on the ground, destroying the launch facility. The N1 explosions were spectacular.
I don't think this is a particularly auspicious name for a product!
I'm attempting not to sound racist here but please understand that my experience here is broad and not based on just a few people.
You're right. Indian programmers in paticular will list just about any technology that they have even run across. I've interviewed people who listed things because somebody they worked with used it.
I've given some thought to this and I think it's a cultural difference in morals. I have deep respect for Indians, I truly do. I decided to adopt some of their parenting ideas as my own. I've also decided to look at the love and forgiveness I often see in Indian marriages and use it as a model for my own.
However, with regards to inflating resumes (and stealing software) there is nothing redeemable about the normal practice in an Indian resume. Ok, I'm sure I sound like a jerk. However, some business practices are simply different across cultures and this is one of them.
Vanguard
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
Have you ever had to sit in a freezing co-lo cage for 36 hours with a Sun FE diagnosing a problem? If this gets the FEs and SEs out of the loop so I can have a nice discussion with a self-diagnosing machine or maybe catch-up on my fiction reading then I'm all for it.
Besides, I ignore alerts from Big Brother, BMC Patrol and Tivoli at times. Who's to say a smarty-pants E10k won't choose to ignore itself whenever SunOS 6.x comes around and gives it that capability? The inmates running the asylum, says me.
Whoo-hoo! Does this mean that the management can install their own XML RPC client-server .NET XML cross-platform multi-tiered Java paradigm?
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
someone with experience in one or two decades of the same kind of technology in the past are shunned because they can't actually list the new technology now, even though they would probably be up to speed in a week or two
So, on your resume, put "In about a week or two, I could come up to speed in any of the following: XML, EJB, .NET, ASP, JSP, PHP, Perl," and a few more keywords for the automated resume scanners that OCR the document and look for buzzwords.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Um... MS has a LONG way to go towards eliminating sysadmins. I think they should simply aim for eliminating enough to bring themselves on par with Linux etc. admins.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
The big multi-national companies are now moving their operations to other countries. Countries like India and China can now do the skilled labor job cheaper than us Americans.
:-) The question is, how are Americans going to compete against this. Will our government use protectionist schemes or will try to make ourselves more attractive. Thats going to be a very interesting question in the coming years.
India for instance has a glut of skilled Computer Science people. These people are incredibly smart and incredibly cheap if you hire them in India.
With jobs moving to these nations it's not going to be easy to compete against them. (admittedly I have a slight edge.
sri
He's management.
Another way, would be to cut back on the padding. (Sorry for the vague math below, but you could still make the same point adjusting the numbers below by one or two orders of magnitude.)
It's a simple question of return on investment. The average CEO takes about 500 times more than the average employee out of the budget. Business Week puts this at an average of $13.1 million per year per CEO. To state the obvious that's 10% of a $131 million budget. Or, assuming your engineers make $250 000 a year, that's 52 FTE engineers, but if your team has to squeak by on a paltry $125 000 a year per person, that's 105 FTE.
What kind of board would hire 104 staff to do nothing and fire productive staff to make room in the budget? Ouch.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I would love to see this in practice... people can be pretty stupid sometimes
We're being lied to again ... yeah, I know, what a shock.
And even less surprising, the people doing the lying don't know they are lying.
... but BOY, it will look super with all those 3D graphics and hopping folders and other such superficial marketing crapola.
"Could I get these icons in Cornsilk Blue?"
Many things will be exampled as simple (as we had seen in every Windows release).
BUT, immense complications will arise immediately when the simplest, real-world alteration will need to be done.
Some guy who was luckless to be assigned to oversee-the-oversight-system will say "how do I change the name of this workgroup?" and will eventually be faced with a 17-point checklist with several IF-THENs involving version numbers.
... perhaps Sun's stock price will be supported for another quarter, which is the only "sensible" business goal in America nowadays.
Sun Microsystems N1: We've all heard this tripe before, and the same thing will happen. Sun will produce a fancy-schmancy system; it will be over-budget, late, under-tested, and with thick manuals
Now, look, dammit. I worked in a call center that used customer-account management software that was designed so poorly that the "customer moved to another address in the service area" event invoked a ritual that Aleister Crowley would've admired. Literally, that operation couldn't be performed without resorting to a 11-point checklist that bordered on folklore for all the reliability it offered, and there were several versions of the checklist going around due to all the confusion as people made their own alterations to counter the errors in the official checklist.
Sun's system will only succeed in automating system administration by severely limiting the scope of administration, either directly in its spec, or indirectly by the customer when he comes to realize that "severe limitations" is its only usable mode. (Comparatively, just think how much easier it would be to support Windows PCs if no user could install a program or alter GUI settings.) N1 will be as poorly designed as any Microsloth emission; from the viewpoint of honoring Sun's promises, N1 will be vaporware even as you grasp the CD it arrives on. But
I bet an even US$20 that N1 will require hardware upgrades whose cost will make your hair turn white (and if white already, then blue). After all, you have to make your servers, clients and network certified to comply with the Sun Meta-Administration Standard, right?
[also misbehaves on Kuro5hin as Peahippo]
It obviously worked wonders for yours.
Lets think about this for a minute.
O.k. I'm done.
If you take a look at our current economy, you will start to notice our friend Mr. DoubleDip.
He looks mad this time around.
How many SysAdmins do you see working for companies that can barely keep afloat? I would say very few.
You better get back to your undergraduate class, or army reserve notice and stop posting to this!!!
BOFH... hehehe...
...when the mythical 'paperless' office arrives and everybody telecommutes and all corporations are 'virtual corporations', and we have strong AI -- I'm not holding my breath.
Shrinking job markets are funny until your career disappears.
Ayn Rand's philosophy isn't so palatable when the only job available in twenty years is washing floors at a McDonald's -- maybe. That job could be automated too.
With jobs being exported overseas, a radical administration gutting unions, job security, medicare, and free schools with such glee, where the hell is anyone supposed to make a living?
Not everyone has an "in" into Harvard or MIT. And most of the top, top management jobs are practically royalty anyway -- for the ultimate example of that, look in the White House. A dumb frat boy who goofed off until he was forty, a National Guard deserter, who ran every company he touched into the ground, who had only six years of public service to his name, got appointed President by his father's friends into his job.
This ain't an idle point. Meritocracy can only go so far when business management, in the name of profit, is dilligently nuking all the jobs they can, and erasing the safety nets for those who can't get hired anymore. The shareholders are happy (until the bubble bursts), but in the end we have an unemployed workforce contrasting with the enormously wealthy executives who canned them.
Where's the software that will get rid of the parasites at the top who pass out the pain? Somehow I doubt that innovative tech will ever see the light of day.
Damnit, sometimes I feel like going communist. With heroes like this, what the hell is the difference?
Hmm. Who is that specs and purchases Sun hardware? It's the sysadmins. Ya gotta laugh, it's a good message to send. Buy our systems and we'll make you redundant.
Anyway. Any decent admin sets up management systems, file distributions, cfengine policy managment etc to remove the mundane management load. You become a system architect rather than a systems administrator.
Deleted
A script kiddie has attacked the system!
Not to worry, a patch will automatically be downloaded to fix the vulnerability.
Patch isn't ready yet! And the exploit has disabled the autoupdate feature anyway!
Everyone, on your knees, time to pray like you've never prayed before!
Not working! Perhaps God requires a sacrifice!
Are there any sysadmins around?
No, already sacrificed.
They don't need to understand it.
Watch what happens when they fire the admins and then a month or so later everything starts to break.
Anecdotal evidence.
On the other hand it does look like the 40k positions for adding users and clearing print queues may be gone..
Can't say I miss them.
Cheers
Genj
We manage about 120 machines, Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, AIX, M88K, a real mishmash. 2 guys. Cfengine, rsync, postgresql, NIS[1], ssh. It isn't difficult.
[1] Yeah, i'd like to use something else, but it works with everything.
Deleted
I mean: What BS is this? *nix does that allready. /. and filling in a short match of ut2k3. Cuz' a good setup can have new userware in a matter of minutes if we will. Don't worry, we've got the brains and we'er into the issue, y'know?
It's only our luck that the people haven't relazied that where not adminig all the time but surfing, posting on
And if you *really* feel threatend by this VaporOS then you're not a good admin. Period.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
"The idea is to virtualize the computer system so that the automated resource management software can add, remove and manage everything dynamically."
I wish that little girl from Jurassic Park could get her hands on this, because it looks like a big pile of dino'shit.
The US is experiencing one of its lowest rates of unemployment for generations. In spite of the economic downturn.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Lets put it this way: Sun clusters managed only to provide resilience for file and database sharing.
If you wanted a resilient Samba or Apache, good luck, not supported. But you can write your own scripts to make use of the cluster infrastructure.
The few companies that tried this needed even more expensive SAs.
And is this company, that could not do an easy to administer cluster, the one that will virtualize SAs and OSs?
Yesssss, sure.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Indeed, and knowing OpenView is an administration nightmare on its own doesn't give me a lot of confidence in N1 and the like. Just give me nagios and I'll run my network just fine.
> If you drop dead tomorrow and the company isn't terribly injured,
> you were doing a good job.
I can go along with that. The skilled admins get paid to sit around
and read usenet and mailing lists (related to security and/or to
development) or work on pet development projects most of the time,
because they _can_, because things are _working_ by themselves.
Backups, for example, are sufficiently automated that all you gotta
do is change the tape. Security means looking over the logs each
morning when you get your mail, and patching anything you find out
about from reading security fora. Maintenance happens when there
is hardware failure...
This is not possible with all operating systems, of course.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
It's not going to happen; here's why.
When people have a problem with thier computers, said people go into "dummy mode". In this mode, even the most basic concepts of logic are too complex because they are "computer stuff".
It's the same reason why even when every piece of hardware and software is working fine, tech support still gets calls.
It's been a long time.
I've worked with Suns reconfiguration stuff - not exactly reliable.
Tell you what Sun - Build a system, install N1, and put a link to it here (slashdot.org).
We'll see how "good" it is...
MVS (or OS/390 or zOS) already tried this years ago. What they found out is that it is possible to automate about 80% of the stuff, and the other 20% still go to a normal human. It frees up people from the easy, redundant stuff, but it doesn't eliminate them completely. There are too many variables in a computer to remove a person from administering it.
Not if you want this crap to actually WORK...
And be secure...
Microsoft tried to make the sys-admin job disappear as well by making everything easy enough for anyone to do...
And you see what that did for security....
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
About 6 years ago new management came into Zenith Electronics, LG Electronics aka: Goldstar. The new VP of Parts Sales reviewed the jobs at his new division and decided to cut my position saying that "we can't afford him" I was a local Novell administrator, CC:Mail administrator, my little network of PCs replaced dumb terminals to our old mainframe, provided connectivity to our new HP AIX minicomputer systems to the local production sites. I fetched data off both systems and ran reports attempting to reconcile the differences. Zenith lasted only about 1 yrear ater the let me go - proof that they did need me after all.
zenray
Exactly. Me, personally, I don't think that sysadmins will get eliminated, although it's likely that their jobs will get forever redefined as time goes on. Actually, this has already happened, more than once I think.
;-)
I'm always wary of making statements like: "That will never change," or: "That will be the same indefinitely." Several years ago, I played Magic: the Gathering, back in 3rd edition. My friends and I always laughed at the suggestion that the dual land cards might get dropped from the print run in the next printing. Eventually, 4th edition came out and it had no dual land cards. Those things go for 10-20 bucks a pop now.
Live and Learn.
Nothing is permanent.
All things change.
Speaking in cliches (like I am) makes people think you're smart when you're (probably) not.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
The article says, "Microsoft is yet to announce anything specific but has plans for virtualisation software, which will most likely form part of its Windows operating system."
To read between the lines a bit, I see several trends in MS technology:
Automatic update - note the various EULAs giving MS the right to do remote update at their discretion, the continual improvements to Windows Update, and the new corporate Software Update Server.
Remote administration - note the Remote Administration feature in W2K Server using Terminal Services as well as the remote admin/help desk features in XP.
Consulting - the various consulting arms of MS used to be break-even propositions to push product, now they are revenue-generating.
Partnering - MS grows ever-closer to a handful of big partners - HP, CSC, and Unisys to name a few.
Trusted Computing - i.e. Palladium and the TCPA.
The conclusion that I come to is that the MS master plan is to drop in servers pre-configured from partners such as HP using MS consulting directing the field operations and partner-consultants as the ground shock troops, lock out all those pesky local admins and users using trusted computing, and then administer it all from the Product Support Services centers in NC, TX, and WA. If it breaks and can't be fixed over the phone or via remote admin, then ship a new one.
The less local talent around, the better for Microsoft.
Of course, this will require a vampire-like attachment of MS's shiny sharp incisors to the customer's bank account, but MS is no doubt willing to make that sacrifice in the name of trusted computing for all.
Oh, and don't forget the automatic billing for content licensed to MS-partnered content providers. I leave it as an exercise for the student to see how that fits into the MS master plan.
Finally, speaking as one MS practitioner to another, don't sit still, and don't blindly accept the MS paradigm of administration by mouse. Learn the command-line. Learn scripting. Learn Perl. Use free tools such as Network Monitor, Ethereal, tools from sysinternals.com, etc. to dig beneath the surface. Get some Linux and cross-platform experience. Knowledge of technologies such as Opera and Samba to mention just two are essential to the enlightened technologist living in the MS world.
You definitely won't get paid what you would in the industry, but, on the other hand, you will get paid. Life isn't too hard (mostly 8 to 5 work) in a relaxed environment and job security.
"Job security?" you say.
Yep. Until the faculty wants to take on more of the responsibility for fixing, using, and managing their computers, education admins are golden.
I could be wrong.
Windows 2000 has added many automated tasks in Active Directory, but when I last worked with it (without service packs), those things tended to be a bit flaky at times. I suspect you probably need the same three guys at 50 machines, but you can probably scale them to 150-200. This is purely theoretical, and is based on a six-month contract learning and setting up a brand-new Windows 2000 network, back pre-SP1. I'd be interested to hear from any experienced 2K admins whether or not my wild-assed guess is accurate.
I have 37 W2K servers and approximately 200 (W2K/NT4) desktops and 20(W2K) laptop users. There's just me, no-one else. I keep pretty busy and can get bogged down quickly when several problems arise at once but, overall, I do pretty well.
I can troll for news and babes occasionally and everything is patched with plenty of attention to virus scanning and general system maintenance.
-PONA-
+that's funny...I don't FEEL tardy.+
Magius_AR
It was supposed to be funny. Sorry.
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
Well, there are two numbers there: 90 servers per sysadmin, and "single point of contact" for 300 servers. If you took all our sysadmins and divided them evenly among all our servers, you'd get that first number. I figured it would be instructive to mention that under my organization's "single point of contact" model, a sysadmin is the primary problem solver for a pool of servers. I'm responsible for writing and maintaining the escalation docs that the NOC uses to resolve issues on 300+ servers without paging me. If I haven't done my job properly, then I'm the one who gets paged in the middle of the night. I'm the one who has to fix the problem. If I can't, I'm the one who decides who to call--the storage team, the monitoring team, the networking team, &c.---and I'm the one who makes sure they fix the problem. For over 300 machines. As both of us pointed out, the only way this is possible is if I have a good process and a good team to fall back on. And that's why I feel comfortable being solely and individually responsible for what happens on those systems. I'd be surprised if there were many sysadmins out there with the same responsibilities, let alone without any team support. I'm surprised already by how many sysadmins can't handle even 90 servers, evenly spread according to your calculations.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
It would be. However, mostly we're all too busy to feel much stress. And the UNIX teams report the same level of satisfaction as the Windows teams on the annual employee satisfaction survey. So either we're all equally brainwashed, or else stress has more to do with the work environment and management than with the OS flavor of choice.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Opsware, the new name for Marc Andreesen's Loudcloud software business (the MSP side was sold to EDS) does exactly that. You can build servers by the singles or hundreds in a replicatable fashion, all the way up to the applications (ie, just under the data layer). The original software supported just a few layers but the rewritten suite of packages does a better job. It's aimed at enterprise customers and is complex/complicated, but my year and a half experience with it was generally good. They support Solaris, Linux & NT, though other OS could and presumably are being added. The software also manages network devices in a similar manner, and has other packages which perform NOC type management, but my experience was with the system configuration management side.
Keeping an in house sysadmin who knows their shit is still cheaper than having sun monitor your whole cluster.
Also, without a sysadmin, there'd be nobody for the engineers to bitch at when 25 all decide to run thermo and verlog sims all at the same time on the cluster...
As long as you have a big room full of really expensive computers, you'll need a goto person who knows what cable goes where and what script does what. Even when you don't have a big room, but everybody's got a super computer at their desk and their all tied into a cluster, you still need someone who arbitrates the whole thing.
(could you imagine the workplace strife if (l)users were allowd to kill each others jobs...)
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
In most organizations, the NOC staff, CIO/CTO/whatchacallit, in-house "tool" programmers (those who write programs which are not a profit center), IT managers, printer monkeys, etc. are all considered "support staff" for machines. If you have a 24/7 rotation of a single NOC on-staff, to be able to handle vacations and such on a 4-on, 3-off rotation, you need at least six guys. Preferably seven, in case two people are sick or take vacation near the same time.
I'm not trying to straw-man you, but most people consider the total number of people supporting machines to count toward the mystical "user to admin ratio". For instance, back in a 90-person, 100+ machine organization several years ago, we had two support people. We took care of all the desktop support and kept the servers running at about a 50-to-1 ratio. The "unseen cost" was the fact that the programmers often handled many basic systems administration tasks themselves. At my current job, in a 400+ person organization with, admittedly, much more severe development needs (banking industry, lots of development to integrate vital services, rather than "run the file servers"), we have a total of 12 support people:
1. Chief Information Officer.
2. Manager of Systems Administration.
3. Programming lead.
4. Java & Windows programmer.
5. Java & *nix programmer.
6. UNIX Admin (-- me).
7. Telephony admin (we're mostly a call center, so this is a HUGE job).
8,9,10: Systems Administrators.
11,12: "Night Operators" who swap backup tapes, handle printed reports, act as security, move stuff around we don't want to move during the day, etc.
If you wanted to stretch it, you could say that we have four "sysadmins" for 400 people. Woot, 100-to-1 support ratio! Reality is quite different. I personally think our organization will have some pruning in the near future, and am working my butt off now to bring our system up to speed with automation issues so we don't have to spend all our time putting out fires when the RIF comes. Realistically, though, we have close to a 40-to-1 machine/admin ratio (including servers, workstations, etc.) For many organizations, if you are not 100-to-1 including *all* your support staff and hours spent by other people doing sysadmin tasks, you're not where you need to be and will have a RIF once management figures out where the costs are distributed.
Magnificently automated processes are the stuff that makes high admin/user ratios work. No bones about it. But if you're going to count it, make sure you count the full cost of systems administration, including the people you don't think are sysadmins. They are still support.
Important note: support ratios are, and IMHO will always be, majorly out-of-whack for software development firms. The needs of a software developer are so different from that of a secretary they simply can't be easily compared. About the only choice there is to distribute a great deal of the administration load among those who work on their machines. There are exceptions, and modes of development that minimize this problem (dedicated sandboxes, shared compile farms, etc.), but overall you'll generally have a lower admin/user ratio in software development.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
I had a feeling this would happen sooner or later.
Naturally. As development tools advance the need for code jockies will be reduced too. Eventually the systems will be powerful enough that managment types will just tell the computer what they what to do and it'll do it. Its always been a matter of 'telling the computer what you want it to do', but we've been progressed from directly entering machine code to modeling business objects in UML (and the like). Eventually there will be layers on top of that too.
Did anyone notice the similarity of the concept (and name) to this episode of Star Trek: http://www.thelogbook.com/log/toslog2.html#tos54 ?
Do you really want to work for a place that uses an OCR on a document to scan for buzzwords?
Would you rather flip burgers?
Will I retire or break 10K?
In 1987, IBM announced that programmers would soon be obsolete and in the future, programs would write programs. We would simply speak to our computers and the computer would magically translate our commands to code, just like on "Star Trek".
As long as there are programmers, you will need SysAdmins to protect systems from programmers. Sure you can virtualize your servers, but what are you going to do when someone writes bad code or worse bad SQL (How about a nice cartesian join)? I guess you could just go to your hardware vendor like IBM or Sun and say, we need more hardware, more disk, more RAM, because the CEO says it's slow. The nice vendor will be happy to sell you a bigger "fish tank", but the real answer is PERFORMANCE TUNING and optimization.
Oracle is also announcing the end of DBA's with Oracle 9i, the database that runs itself.
Try this experiment.
1. Buy a Sun Server that doesn't need a Sysadmin.
2. By Oracle 9i, that doesn't need a DBA.
3. Let the vendors do the install and setup.
4. Turn your users and developers loose and let them go develop systems to run your company.
It won't take long until something very bad happens. After a few months, performance will start to degrade, production data will be deleted, disks will fill up, and any writable directory will contain large amounts of crap. Backups will be non-existant, user accounts will be mismanaged and have totally lame passwords, production and development will be running on the same virutal server and same database, there will be no such thing as a hotfailover system or failover system since you be fortunate to have production running at all.
I've cleaned it up time and time and time again. There is only one person that can save you from this horrible mess, and that is your NAZI Sysadmin and NAZI DBA, both feared, revered, and smart.
Ever see that video "When Animals Attack!", there should be series called "When Users Attack!" and "When Developers Attack!".
Sysadmins are a cheap insurance policy and just plain handy to have around. Also, I just checked and Sun/Oracle still offer training for all their ADMIN-LESS products. If anyone has a success story, I want to hear it.
"In general, I tend to think that you're not really doing your job well, as a sysadmin, unless you're putting yourself out of a job every day. A really well-run network should run great whether or not you happen to show up that day -- or that week, or that month. That's sort of an abstract Holy Grail... real networks don't work like that, but it's a good goal. The closer you approximate it, the better you're doing. If you drop dead tomorrow and the company isn't terribly injured, you were doing a good job. (or you weren't doing anything :-) ) "
This is perfectly correct for the NETWORK, but doesn't take into account stupid applications. I administer several aeperate networks for several clients. The networks rarely have any trouble (and the one running off of a Red Hat server & Samba NEVER has any problems). What IS a problem is application software. Things like PCLaw, Outlook, etc... These things are a giant pain in the ass and are what keep me in business (well, that and upgrades and new installations). This also applies to Windows clients in general. Until Windows is stable (had a client call yesterday complaining that all of the text of his email messages had disappeared and that the Windows help system wouldn't allow him to enter any text. Had him reboot, all fixed), sysadmins will be necessary. There is also the question of configuring new options (email servers, ftp servers, VPNs, etc...).
There aren't fewer secretaries that I have noticed. If anything, they still do all the typing and more. By the same token, the sysadmin will still be dealing with server and network issues and all of the above mentioned things except for purchasing and the like because there are already people for that. Be it office managers or purchasing departments. The idea would be to reduce redundancy, not shuffle it around.
the fire extinguisher will put the sysadmin out when the sysadmin catches fire, and who's going to replace the hardware? and get backups out of the vending machine?
"!= Slashdot idealized sysadmin"
And thank $DEITY for that! We really don't want 1000's of BOFH's running around the world... Oh the humanity of it...
Jesterr
The obvious problem with this is that adding space is not necessarily the Right Thing to do--it becomes easy for a poorly written or configured program to consume all the space in your SAN. In other words, yes, the problem is easy to solve in the special case that you know you always want to add space to /var and never delete anything; but is not really possible to do in a fully general way.
However, such a solution might be fine with Sun, who wants to sell you disk.
demi
The sys admin will be around forever. But what I'm trying to do is estimate the major cost components that make up the sysamin's job. I'm a market researcher looking for any industry cost data on managing UNIX + Linux + NT server farms. My specific focus is software configuration management -- software distribution and application deployment. I'll use this data to create a cost model (spreadsheet) which I'm happy to send to anyone who wants the finished product (dot@d-o-tnet.com). In the interests of full disclosure, I'm doing this work on behalf of a client (a startup vendor). However, none of this will be used as the basis of spam or any sales activities. Thanks for any pointers / URLs
The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance
The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system
in a portable package the size of a briefcase. The guy on the left has an
Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case. Also in the case are four
fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition. The owner of the
Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered -- and delivered on
target -- in less time, and with less effort. All for $795. It's inevitable.
If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 -- or any personal
computer -- he's the one who's in trouble. One round from an Uzi can zip
through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do
to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum. In fact, detachable magazines
for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can
take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied
into Ethernet or other local-area networks. What about the new 16-bit
computers, like the Lisa and Fortune? Even with the Winchester backup,
they're no match for the Uzi. One quick burst and they'll find out what
Unix means. Make your commanding officer proud. Get an Uzi -- and come home
a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons.
-- "InfoWorld", June, 1984
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