10 Dos and Don'ts To Make Sysadmins' Lives Easier

CowboyRobot writes "Tom Limoncelli has a piece in 'Queue' summarizing the Computer-Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology's list of how to make software that is easy to install, maintain, and upgrade. FTA: '#2. DON'T make the administrative interface a GUI. System administrators need a command-line tool for constructing repeatable processes. Procedures are best documented by providing commands that we can copy and paste from the procedure document to the command line.'"

Comments

I disagree on the GUI

[Zarhan]

...if the GUI is well done and complements command line.. Some tasks actually ARE much better performed with Point&Click.

One example of a "good" GUI that I use a lot is the ASDM for Cisco ASA firewalls. Most of the simpler admin tasks are in fact *faster* via ASDM. If you have your network objects all properly set up and you need to add a firewall rule, it's far simpler to select it from a list (actually, in this case it's a combobox - just type first few letters to filter your choices and then click) than typing that stuff in manually. Packet tracer to check the rules is much nicer to use via the GUI. Setting up VPN profiles is simpler via ASDM. Handling network object groupings is simpler via ASDM.

Editing access-lists, doing routing configuration and most of the more "rudimentary" tasks are still something I do via command line, though.