For the New Systems Administrator

Virtual_JTW — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:40:58 GMT

By the time I was twelve I knew I wanted to be in the IT business. I loved my Commodore 64, my 1541 disk drive and 300 baud modem! I loved dialing into bulletin board systems and typing in games with all of those peeks and pokes. I didn't know it at the time, but I was really learning a lot about computer hardware, storage media, telecommunications and software programming.

Responsibilities at my first corporate job included managing and maintaining LANtastic on a 10base2 network. Okay, I was mostly maintaining it - not very reliable as it ran on top of MS-DOS and the transceivers failed all of the time but hey, this was before the whole dot com boom era so you could expect much back then. I also had a Novell NetWare 3.x NOS running for one department (remember NetWare Loadable Modules, NLMs?). Once NetWare 4.11 came out I convinced management to dump LANtastic and 10baseT and run upgrade to NetWare 4.11 and Ethernet (remember NetWare Directory Services, NDS - can you say "AD"?). I didn't realize it at the time, but I was really learning a lot about network operating systems (NOS), networking hardware and standards.

It was around this time that I started to realize that I wanted to work with multiple technologies, especially newer technologies that were interesting because they solved a complex problem or saved businesses money. I didn't want to become a walking product manual for one piece of software or hardware component and focus on that for the rest of my life (or until I retired, which-ever came first)!

My next opportunity involved leading a team in the design, implementation and management of MS Systems Management Server (SMS) 2.0 to potentially hundreds of locations around the US. While the tie-in may not be oblivious, working with SMS allowed me to learn more about MS SQL Server 2000, Windows management technologies (CIM, WBEM, etc.) and data synchronization across slow links (anyone heard of Starburst?). Not-to-mention it was a great opportunity to work for a 3 billion dollar publicly traded company - a different culture than my previous employer to say the least.

Unfortunately, management made a short-sided, mostly political decision and shut down the SMS implementation after it was successfully deployed to the first remote site. However, this turned-out to be good news: I discovered virtualization around this same time - 2001/2002 timeframe via VMware Workstation. Shortly there-after I setup a production GSX server hosting three VMs that shared the same base image with each VM having a unique redo log (remember that VMware whitepaper?). The users couldn't tell the difference and were a bit surprised when I finally let them in on the secrest! And as they say: the rest is history.

To expand on a theme, virtualization has allowed me to work with and learn more about operating systems, enterprise-level server hardware (such as how CPUs work), enterprise-level storage and all of its related technologies (SAN hardware, iSCSI, fiber switches, etc).

I don't pretend to have the most unique career path in the world - I know there are many other Systems Administrators and Engineers that have lived similar experiences. And for that reason I'm identifying a new breed of IT professional. Systems Analyst, Systems Administrator and Systems Engineer titles are all less meaningful in this context. I've had all of these titles at some point in my career.

Regardless of title, we're IT professionals that stand apart based on our past experiences and constant passion to always be working with current and newer technologies that ultimately allow businesses operate faster, smarter and more efficiently. Virtualization, especially VMware Virtual Infrastructure and the coming vSphere products, has allowed us to take businesses to that next level.

And we won't stop there. We're constantly keeping an eye on cloud-based technologies, standards and initiatives. We'll be beta testing these products - and not just download, install, use for five minutes and throw-away. We're excited about the product and want to see it succeed so we'll provide feedback. We'll keep an eye on the bleeding edge and maybe sometimes participate in a limited way - such as a product install in a lab for evaluation, but we won't bet the company's business on it (at least those of us that have been around for awhile and have made that mistake before).

To bring us full circle I have to ask, what is the next NetWare? The next SMS? The next VMware VI? Is it more VMware? Quite possibly. Or maybe it's something we haven't thought of yet. Maybe its mainframe 2.0 with pervasive high-speed wireless connectivity brought about by a technology such as WiMAX? It's hard, if not impossible to predict. But one thing is certain, it will be "cool" and we'll be among the first of the light bulbs popping on throughout the IT industry and the businesses we work for will thanks us for it.

Manual Automation

For the New Systems Administrator