A Day in the Life of a Systems Administrator So you want to be a sysadmin? Presented by: Austin Grice and Gayathri Swaminathan Oklahoma Information Technology Mentorship Program

$whois austin Call center survivor Call center supervisor Junior systems administrator Systems Engineer Tinkering with Linux since 2003 Worked in Linux professionally since 2010 Implemented ERPs since 2010 But I still use a Mac for my daily driver

$whois gayathri Programmer Analyst Junior systems administrator Remote applications engineer Systems Engineer worked in Unix/Linux since 2002 performed large scale deployments since 2004 implemented ERPs since 2008

What is a sysadmin? System users DBA Developers Storage Network Security Applications Analysts Systems Engineer Image credit: Operations

$whereis problem Image credit:Prologue Films VFX for Marvel Studios

$grep clues Large infrastructure tied to service(s) Constant refresh projects Inconsistent or specific configurations Tough to measure and metric Tough to scale No hope for automation How do you document mammoth architectures of different types? Instant large learning curve for new hires

$find solutions Credit: Adjust the perspectives!

$diff solution1 solution2 solution Monitor monitor monitor - System profiling - Isolated test environment Figure initial requirements Record behaviors Analyze metrics and identify the useful ones Develop architecture Narrow design constraints Benchmark Load and regression tests - A great place to get your teams to collaborate!

$which solution

Model system 10 Credit: Hypervisor + OS Standard network profile Standard storage profile Standard host profiles Standard system profile Standard metrics and monitors

$vi behavior

Iterative life cycle Gather requirements Dependencies Define metrics Discuss placement of Security controls Start communications on integrations Initiate conversations on external interfaces Collect system behaviors Profile system Expect non-predictable behaviors

Tool chest A terminal and shell of your choice (bash/zsh) Vim text editor (or EMACS) A local hyper visor (VMWare View, VirtualBox) An IRC client (for help from fellow sys admins) Wiki for sharing docs and knowledge An ssh bastion host for getting around Wireshark for finding that pesky packet GOOGLE! Someone has had the problem before

Now we have been introduced... A few questions to you! - How many of you can play a musical instrument? - Do you keep a log of number of lines of code you have written? - Who uses your code? - Who could use your code? - Raise your hand if you ever thought, I could write software for that! - How many of you use Linux? - How many of you use Unix/Linux? - How many of you have been in white board sessions with your professor or classmates?

The Unix Philosophy  Small is beautiful.  Make each program do one thing well.  Build a prototype as soon as possible.  Choose portability over efficiency.  Store numerical data in flat ASCII files.  Use software leverage to your advantage.  Use shell scripts to increase leverage and portability.  Avoid captive user interfaces.  Make every program a filter. Credit: Mike Gancarz Also refer: Notes of programming in C - Rob Pike -