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Managing Young Sys Admins At Oregon State Open Source Lab
mstansberry writes "Lance Albertson, architect and systems administrator at the Oregon State University Open Source Lab, uses a sys admin staff of 18-21-year-old undergrads to manage servers for some high-profile, open-source projects (Linux Master Kernel, Linux Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, and Drupal to name a few). In this Q&A, Albertson talks about the challenges of using young sys admins and the lab's plans to move from Cfengine to Puppet for systems management."
As a 19 year old Computer Science major, I give major props to those kids for not crashing the server once a day.
Um... Don't all universities use students as sysadmins? I know this was nothing special at Utah state university. There were dozens of networks for varying departments and projects, and all of them administered at least at some level by university students.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Because Greek mythology is reserved for server names, and everything else is copyrighted.
When I clicked on it, all I got was a black screen.
Or, they're a bunch of Goth admins and are really into the whole black on black thing.
NIN rocks!
Most universities don't teach good system management. The CS departments are training developers and programmers. Since good SA's like stability and good developers like chaos the two normally don't mix. Does OSU have a SA degree program?
The main thing that people that age need to learn (both professionally and personally) is that Their Actions Have Consequences.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Young people with their heads on straight. Definitely newsworthy.
I know the whole "you young'un, you can't manage a server to save your life!" feeling and all that, but really... is managing a server, even an important one, really that hard - when you have someone to go to when you have questions? A lot of lab administration seems to be finding problems before they become a real problem, which is time consuming.
You may as well have a story about dental work done by *gasp* dental students and, lo and behold, they are actually doing a good job! Shocking. To think that young people could actually learn something. :)
OTOH, it's interesting to read about the difficulties he brings up. They're pretty ... boring, IMO.
It generally takes around six months for a student to feel comfortable with our environment.
Like most jobs?
Another challenge is the short turnaround with students, as we usually only have them for two to three years before they graduate. This creates a constant issue to ensure our documentation and training is honed.
Two to three years, that's not too short, is it? And it's interesting that it's an "issue" to him to keep their documentation good/honed. I hope the graduates are learning that documentation is a BIG ISSUE in real jobs, for exactly that purpose: if something happens to you, the business can't just stop for 3 months while someone else tries to figure out what you did :)
The members of the CS department at my college actually petitioned to have me take over as their lab admin. The incumbent staff admin was notorious for breaking things and making it a chore to use the systems. Despite the complaints against him and requests specifically to hire me on, the department chair kept the incumbent.
I found it all very amusing, especially since I'm not a CS student. I'm just well-known enough to the group. I'm also greatly amused by how often I get asked for help when I'm around there, specifically one case where a student was in a 390-something class. I replied, "We really don't know each other at all, and I'm not a CS student. What made you think I am a good person to ask?" He said he'd just seen me help with enough other people's problems... and so I gave him a hand too.
Long-windedness aside, my university only uses students to provide, "Cean the viruses off your personal computer," services.
SIG: HUP
I actually broke down and RTFA. The interviewer must have been in the next stall over or on an elevator with the Oregon State employee. How many questions was that, like 4 or 5? Maybe one of the servers was getting ready to crash because one of the student admins was trying to install Windows...
Great that the university is giving these newbies a chance to get their feet wet before they venture into the real world. This type of opportunity is what i fine lacking while I was going to school and I had to search this type of opportunity out for myself.
One of the biggest problem I find when you first enter into the IT field as a student is that there is a lack of on the job hands on training. Students really need to be expose to hands on materials more to reinforce what they've learned in text books and labs.
I am in the upper bounds of that range. I do Sysadmin stuff in our corporation, though not as much as the Chief IT Manager. I do the cabling, I set up the racks, I make sure the UPS are tested regularily. All the grunt work a Sysadmin would do. I help with decisions on new network policies, and dealing with security and updates. Network Topology is something I wish I had a say in, but don't. I will on occaison, be called in to reboot a server, or replace a bad drive.
I had to learn the Help-Ticket system on the job, but really that was like a 5 minute breeze because most of it is common sense. (Ticket comes in, prioritize, assign, do)
I'm glad to see that younger people are getting into these positions, since I think they help push forward newer technologies and methodologies. It'll sound like I'm tooting my own horn here (and Maybe I am just a little :P) but we've got a dozen boxes in our server room plugged into the rack so that people from other branches across Canada can Remote in to access certain software. It's a nightmare to look at, and it takes up alot of space. The IT Manager isn't fully familiar with Virtualization, though thats something I was taught in school less than 2 years ago. I'm sure you can see where this is going.
All in all, the only thing holding back us young people from these positions is just experience. Almost any school you graduate from with a CS degree will teach you the fundamentals of system administration. However you can't exactly apply for that position with little to no experience (don't get me wrong, you CAN apply, but the guy who has 5+ years experience managing Windows Server 2003 is going to look a bit shinier).
It's good to have a Looong project like this to show you DO have experience. I went and switched from a CS Degree to simply an Object Oriented Programming because it was shorter and I enjoyed programming more, but now that I'm out here working I wish I had that education. (I know right, how did I land a Sysadmin/Technician job as an OOP grad? Funny story, ask me later). Anyways, If I could show my boss "Here's the webserver that I set up and maintained" I think he'd be more lenient with letting me handle things I know how to handle. It's frustrating when he mentions a problem and you know a solution but he won't admit its a good idea because you're fresh. That's more a problem with my boss though, and probably isn't a good representation of every manager out there.
The Oregon State University Open Source Lab's data center hosts some of the Linux community's heaviest hitting projects including the Linux Master Kernel and the Linux Foundation. It is also the primary location for the Apache Software Foundation and Drupal, open source content management software. The lab, aka OSUOSL, also hosted the core infrastructure for Mozilla's Firefox project, and currently host's six of Google's servers.
Uh- why is one organization the primary/master site for so many high-profile, critical open source projects?
This is bad for a number of political, economic, security, and technical reasons. All it takes is one pissed off Dean or university president and you can be shut down overnight. It's happened to some famous researchers; one morning they came in and found all their equipment locked up in storage, their papers confiscated, and students/researchers/staff axed.
Please help metamoderate.
When I was 18 I started at a Managed Hosting company that just recently went public as a Linux Sysadmin. I've had my hands on the insides of some very big web companies, and I've gone through the ups and downs. Such as the recent Dallas Outages or the infamous driver who knocked out our power a few years back. Along with being thrust into a Sysadmin position barely after getting out of high school (and college as I graduated at 17 before I did high school), I've also had to deal with corporate heads trying to make their imprints. These kids had it ***king easy, I've had to let guys cry on the phone because they didn't have any backups and their whole business was relying on that one thing on their server. I've learned infinitely more in this environment (no I'm not at work right now) than I would have if I had gone into my university lab as an admin.
I thought that being a good sysadmin, or a good tennis player, or a good anything depended on the experience and natural talent the person has, not his or her age. There are kids out there that can probably develop much, much better than many with years and years of experience in the field; hell, most of the hackers back in the day were kids themselves!
I think that actually letting these folks do something of importance with their skills is more laudable, since most companies that hire undergrads or high school students can only afford to give them low-risk projects that may or may not contribute to their development of in-field experience.
It's not like it's the Accounting department or HR. I have my own open source lab in my home.
- Things are the way they are because they're coded that way -
The lack of a marketing and sales division, or indeed the need to have a "marketable" name at all. Plus a geeky need to overexplain with acronyms, backronyms, puns on other software (more | less anyone?) or other obscure references. And, but to a much lesser degree, no desire to fight other projects and particularly companies with lawyers over trademark disputes. Usually if it's a cool name it's already used, like for example Phoenix which became Firebird which eventually ended up as Firefox. If you don't care, call it Ekiga and noone will fight you over it ;)
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
18-21 year old undergrads
Pics?
outsourced with several shell scripts?
Yours In Ashgabat,
Kilgore Trout
But it's not that simple. If that were the case, we would have a bunch of more-or-less neutral names; these names are gayer than Richard Simmons.
While entry-level programmers may make a slightly higher salary than a similar systems administrator, over time there's a lot more upward opportunity for the sysadmin. Systems Engineering and Systems Architecture - being the guy that ties the network, the server, and the apps together, is a very in-demand skill and is something programmers will never have the opportunity to become. Programmers only make the big bucks when they have other specialized knowledge that's specific to the apps they are developing, i.e. finance, GIS, physics, etc..
I'm personally glad I made the decision 12 years ago to move into systems after earning my Comp. Sci. degree. I went from web app development for an ISP to Linux/Solaris/HPUX sysadmin, to Systems Architecure, to Info Security.
Even gayer than that would be "Dick Semens", hey I've got a new name for an OSS program!
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Sorry, there is no such thing as an 18-21 year old sys admin.
There are plenty of kids pretending to be admins that are 18-21 years old, but just because someone gives you root, doesn't make you an admin anymore than installing mysql and creating a table makes you a DBA.
Having root on a Linux box doesn't make you an admin, regardless of how ignorant you are of that fact.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Free labor aint free
Are there people out of college who want to be sys admins? We are tying to hire a sys admin, but we either get people who are overqualified -- they would not want to do the job for a long time -- or we get people who are under-qualified -- front desk support types you cannot design and manage a whole network.
On top of that, new grads don't usually have a lot of real world knowledge for sys admin work, though we would definitely relax this requirement for someone who is a problem solver and eager to do the job. (We haven't found this person yet, though)
I heard from one of the higher-ups that Gnome projects' names are more like an inside joke. "How can we make some of the best software out there and give them the most aweful names?"
The game.
Man, I wish I hadn't already burned all my mod points today. Been there, done that, got the scars and war stories along with my BOFH T-shirt. :)
I'm in my fourth year working and studying at the Colorado State University College of Business. Student-facing systems are pretty much 100% run by students, who report to student managers, who report to the IT Director and a student committee representing students who pay the tech fees. It's worked remarkably well, and I've been in several roles throughout my tenure- Lab Technician, network engineer, sysadmin, security team lead, web developer.
In terms of the department's effectiveness, I would say that students receive a great value and enthusiastic service from their colleagues. The risk of system failure is pretty low since we have decent turnover and a hierarchy of newbie and more experienced staff. (It also helps having a good balance of student employees in the technical disciplines and the business administration major.) Everybody starts out with very little experience, and gets direct access to systems they wouldn't otherwise be trusted with. We put heavy emphasis on documentation and formal training requirements, but a lot of stuff is "throwing us in the lake and learning how to swim." I was 18 when I got the security team lead position, and later that week a horrible false positive in $vendor's antivirus definitions rendered every workstation in the college useless. The real-world experience of emergency response and dealing with managing a team and staying accountable to others taught me so much.
I value this kind of opportunity as something much more valuable than an internship, some entry-level jobs, or even my degree program. The job's flexibility with my school schedule and direct pertinence to my studies added several dollars worth of value to the decent student hourly rate.
Well, I haven't seen someone display such blatant ignorance while calling someone with a clue ignorant for quite some time, so I guess I'll set the record straight ...
That is an absurd thing to say, and the irony is that you claim to be a great sysadmin, but can't figure out that a good sysadmin doesn't have ignorant users (at least not for long.)
And how do you plan to accomplish that while leaving them ignorant? You'd be surprised how much happier users are when you actually know how to do your job and educate the users so that they understand why something has to be done the way it does.
Are you fscking serious? Why the hell do you think they came up with /etc/motd ? (Message Of The Day for those who don't know and are following along.) If you are doing your job right then users know when backups happen. They know what new software you are installing, and when; you have visibility.
Maybe he has people similar to you setting the bar ;-)
Non-disclaimer: I was a VAX/VMS system manager at the age of 22, having been professionally trained by DEC at their Burlington Training facility, and I have been involved in various aspects of technology from sysadmin, hardware and software development, SQA my entire adult life (I'm now "over the hill"). I have had to deal with idiots like the parent my whole life, and his/her/it's attitude is outdone only by phenomenal cluelessness.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
An admins job isn't just 'make things easy on users'.
Yes it is. It is an admin's job to make things as easy as possible on the users over as long a period as possible. That is why backups are made; so the users don't have to redo all their work if there's a failure. That's why there's firewalls; so the users' machines don't get infected and their network isn't crippled. Without an admin, small organizations can chug along until something breaks (and they have to contract an admin to patch it), but life isn't easy. A full-time sysadmin for a company or a department has only one purpose; to make things easy on the users.
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
Why the Drupal site is so dog ass slow at times.
OSU's CS department has been using undergrad sysadmins for years, including research type projects.
Deidre Waters is partly responsible for this and irc.freenode which servers run from OSU and stupid GENTOO devs who steal BSD code and port it to gentoo, if you do not like my comment then sue me. Open source offer! GPL and BSD licensed. Bytes just nibble a bit.... meow :)
All cows eat grass!
... these undergrads work cheap! And we only have to zap them once with the tazer to get them to stop doing "rm -rf /".
What's the point of this article? That young sysadmins can now be exploited by their school instead of their first employer?
Oh, and what exactly are they training them so well for anyway? Their first job, they'll learn that there's never time nor budget allowed for doing things like setting up Puppet. They want to do that, they can cram it in during lunch and after-hours, and hope they don't get fired if they get it wrong, and zero praise (or even comprehension) if they get it right.
The school's doing them a disservice. Throw them a pile of broken five year old servers, a "datacenter" diagram that looks mysteriously like their dorm closet, and a $10 Starbucks card with a little card that says, "Thank you so much for contributing to my mansion... ahem, er... our company mission this year... without a raise... ahem, without pay since you're an intern... and Happy Holidays from the CEO!" That'll do more to prepare them for the work world than managing big projects like... ooh, mirrors. (Bestill my beating heart. Mirrors! How high tech!)
LOL!
+++OK ATH
Lesson 2 is that it doesn't matter what your actions are, if someone doesn't like you and they've got power over your position, you're fucked.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers