Great response Adam...thanks for tying everything in together! I didn't mean to start a civil war on here guys, my apologies. I did learn a lot though about the different sides and found things I can appreciate about both.
Supporting a heterogeneous environment, I hope LOPSA continues to grow it's goal of having sysadmins from both sides of the fence. I haven't been around this community as long as most all of you have, but I have enjoyed the discussions I've seen so far. Thanks again for everybody's input, I'm glad to be here! On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 7:43 AM, Adam Levin <[email protected]> wrote: > > You know, I've been enjoying this discussion very much, despite the > homeland threat level occasional veering towards fuschia. > > I don't know about anyone else, but I've gotten a few key points out of > all of the information presented: > > 1) *Vendors differ* in their approaches to creating systems and software. > Windows comes from a desktop background where they had to deal with all > levels of user experience, while UNIX comes from a very different > background. Both sets of vendors, however, have come a long way since > their beginnings. Windows had a lot of learning to do in the server > realm, but long gone are the NT Server days. Powershell is a significant > tool, and as has been mentioned, more and more of the Windows system > internals are coming out into the open for people to use and understand. > On the UNIX side, we've come a long way from cryptic libraries and > do-it-yourself drivers. In fact, without Red Hat and Suse doing the work > they've done on the support contract side, larger companies would never > have taken linux seriously (and Sun might still be around :) ). UNIX is > more user-friendly than ever, and they learned that by watching Windows. > This brings up a second point: > > 2) *Employers differ* on what they want and need out of their technology. > Some companies are willing to put their money behind strong technologists > who have a lot of low-level knowledge of the systems and can debug those > drivers, while others require accountability outside the company in the > form of service contracts and SLAs. Even when paying for software and > systems, though, someone earlier mentioned expecting them to be bug-free. > I think that's a bit optimistic, and why we still need sysadmins to help > manage those bugs, find temporary fixes, and report to the interested > parties to work with them to a resolution. Some companies are willing to > work with CentOS and Ubuntu while others insist on RHEL, AIX and Windows, > and they don't need or want their employees spending time debugging and > fixing, but rather want them engaged in relationship management to get > things done. That brings up a third point: > > 3) *Sysadmins differ* on what they bring to the table and how they do > their jobs. In fact, we as a group can't even seem to agree on what a > system administrator is, so it should be no surprise that employers don't > really know either, and there is therefore a wide array of expectations by > our various employers about how we should be spending our time. Some of > us come from strong technology backgrounds like computer science and > software engineering, and we find jobs that require that level of skill > because we enjoy it. Those employers expect us to be mucking with code to > make things smoother or more efficient. Some of us come from more of a > business background and prefer to manage the vendor relationships to get > satisfaction, and our employers expect us to be on the phone with those > vendors or with the (usually outsourced) help desk dealing with things > like reporting and commercial management/deployment tools. Sysadmins > even, believe it or not, differ on how they want to interact with each > other. It may very well be that UNIX, because of its design and use > cases, tends to foster more involvement with peers, while Windows, again > because of its design and use cases, fosters more involvment with vendors > and technical support institutions. There is still a need for admins of > all types to talk with and learn from their peers, even when their peers > may deal with "the other OS". Hopefully LOPSA can fill than need. > > 4) Finally, *communities differ* in their missions and how they support > the various vendors, employers and technologies. Just because the Windows > community doesn't support as much code-diving as the UNIX community > doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There seem to be plenty of forums and > blogs online for Windows users, and there are conferences, though they > have different offerings from the more UNIX-centric conferences because, > as already mentioned, UNIX and Windows are still different. There are > also vendor communities, for tools that are cross-platform or for > technologies (like storage) that apply all over. My employer, being a > pharmaceutical, is part of a community of companies who face similar > organizational and regulatory challenges, but since we don't see people > from academia, it might be easy to imagine that there's less of a > community there, which is far from the case. > > The approaches all differ, but in the end what we bring to the table is > enabling companies (that is, employers) to meet and exceed their goals > through the application of appropriate technology, keeping that technology > performing at acceptable levels, improving on the existing technology when > possible, and finding new technology as needed. Again, I think we all > hope that we as an organization can bridge all of these differences and > bring the whole of the sysadmin community together. > > -Adam > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ >
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