The Decline and Fall of System Administration

snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia questions whether server virtualization technologies are contributing to the decline of real server administration skills, as more and more sysadmins argue in favor of re-imaging as a solution to Unix server woes. 'This has always been the (many times undeserved) joke about clueless Windows admins: They have a small arsenal of possible fixes, and once they've exhausted the supply, they punt and rebuild the server from scratch rather than dig deeper. On the Unix side of the house, that concept has been met with derision since the dawn of time, but as Linux has moved into the mainstream — and the number of marginal Linux admins has grown — those ideas are suddenly somehow rational.'"

Comments

From personal experience

[Xacid]

"they punt and rebuild the server from scratch rather than dig deeper."

From personal experience this is normally due to management jumping down our throats to simply "get it done" which unfortunately runs counter to our inquisitive desires to actually solve the problem.

I suspect it's the end result of pressure to get more bang for their bucks in a tight economy, but that's pure speculation. It really could be a trend of the times.

Re:From personal experience

[causality]

Reminds me of our Windoze guy in my previous job. I had run into some kind of problem with XP at home and spent a good amount of time banging my head against it. Finally I told him what was going on and asked what he recommended. "Reinstall XP" was the answer. I thought he was joking, nope he was serious. :P

Not only was he completely serious, he probably can't understand why you might have thought he was joking.

The idea that it's a black box and you shouldn't expect to understand how or why something happened is definitely one of the more subtle costs of Microsoft systems. It lends credibility to the (false) notion, so common among average users, that you're either a completely unskilled newbie or a serious expert who can discern the inner workings of the mysterious black box. It discourages middle ground for intermediary skill levels, the kind of thing that would otherwise occur naturally as users gain experience over time.

Most of all, it's supports the falsehood that it's unreasonable to expect the most basic competence from non-experts.

Re:Gee, ya think?

[rhsanborn]

There are a lot of cases where pressing the button means that the problem will go away...for a few weeks. It will work right until you hit the same conditions that caused the problem in the first place. Suddenly, your using the refresh to cover up either a poor implementation, or a standing bug, and it isn't going to go away until you call that guy in suspenders.

Re:Clone my car!

[shawb]

The real solution? Reimage the production server to just get it working, then you dig around on the dev server until you find out what's actually going on.

Re:Clone my car!

[Ephemeriis]

The real solution? Reimage the production server to just get it working, then you dig around on the dev server until you find out what's actually going on.

Exactly.

If the machine is in production it needs to be working. You don't have time to dig around and find the root cause. You need it to work. Now. If you've got a virtualized environment it is trivial to bring up a new VM, throw an image at it, and migrate the data.

Then you take your old, malfunctioning VM into a development environment and dig for the root cause, so that you don't see the same problem crop up on your new production machine.

Re:Hyperviser

[__aamnbm3774]

This whole argument is retarded. I always pick the most appropriate response to the problem at hand. If your server is hosed and not booting, I don't have time to mess around with some Knoppix DVD, trying to figure out exactly where in the boot process it is dying. Especially if you have nightly backups! Sometimes a clean sweep and restore is perfectly acceptable and reasonable. Why even sacrifice downtime trying to troubleshoot an issue that could be resolved within minutes?!

Now, if it happens again the following night, you do have a deeper problem and should investigate it further, because constantly restoring the machine is now the inefficient part in the process.

It's like we've lost common sense in favor of our technical ego.

Production enviroments

[DerekLyons]

Some of the comments here remind me of a post on a woodworking board a few months back. Essentially, the poster was lamenting because he had to fire a guy because he couldn't afford to keep him... Not because of the economy, but because the guy was an absolutely inflexible perfectionist. He'd spend $300 worth of time on what should have been a $60 job... The guy was a hell of a woodworker, at home in his own shop, but just couldn't adapt to a production environment.

This isn't about Windows vs. Unix. This is about admins not understanding their job is to get production rolling again, not to satisfy their obsessive need to understand every problem or their need to satisfy their ego. ("I'm a UNIX admin dammit, I refuse to use habits that make me look like a Windows admin" or it's equivalent is a refrain modded up again and again here on Slashdot.) If a reboot or a re-imaging fixes the problem, that's the right solution. If it doesn't, *then* you dig deeper.

Re:Hyperviser

[drsmithy]

For example, Linux is extremely easy to use -- if you understand it. Windows is a hell of a lot easier to learn but knowing all about it won't make it much easier to use.

That, is entirely a matter of opinion.

Your comment there describes what is easy to learn.

No, it doesn't. Your comment assumes that an interface should *have* to be learnt, to be easy to use.

The CLI appeals to people who are willing to learn, who like learning new things and consider it worthwhile.

No, the CLI appeals primarily to people who like to focus on memorising semantic minutiae and believe that doing so is, in and of itself, a productive endeavour.

The terminal is for non-trivial tasks.

The implication that GUIs are only used for "trivial" tasks is ridiculous on its face.

The average Windows user who views learning as an unreasonable burden that should never be expected of anyone who wants to use a complex machine ... they avoid the up-front investment of learning to understand the system. Instead, they can jump in and start using the system right now. But they continuously pay for it over time in the form of enjoying few or none of those advantages.

There is nothing unique to Windows, or even computers, about this. Do you know the intricacies of how your car works ? How about your blender or oven ? Could you fabricate a new bed or sofa from raw materials, and without modern tools ? Do you grow your own produce ? Could you butcher a cow or chicken ? Could you set a complex fracture or create your own painkillers ? Can you brew your own beer ?

It's like the difference between people who live within their means and use plastic only as a form of payment, saving up until they can actually afford something before they purchase it, versus those who live all the time on credit. The person living on credit gets the stuff they want right now but ultimately pays quite a bit more for it and can quickly find themselves in over their head. The discipline and delayed gratification that the latter is trying so hard to avoid is something that the former considers to be virtues worth cultivating.

No, it's nothing like that at all. One is an example of financial irresponsibility and the other is simply realising that you do not need a deep and intricate understanding of a given thing to use or take advantage of the services or benefits it provides.