Tag Archives: documentation

Ownership vs. Responsibility – the fine line of a sysadmin

One of the biggest issues I’m noticing in the industry is that we’re still seeing sysadmins taking “ownership” of certain things. For example, I’ll hear people talking about “my” servers or “my” service or “my” tickets. I know I’ve been guilty of this before (I’ve referred to the DC’s at work as “my DC’s” many many times) but I’m trying to… Read more »

Documentation & Planning – the sneaky skills

One of the biggest issues I’ve come across with the places I’ve worked (and the people I’ve worked with!) is lack of ability to document and to plan. It seems that this is a much maligned and skipped skill that many just don’t have. This post is about how I do my documentation and planning, which I hope could help… Read more »

Pearls of Wisdom from my 2003 Decommissioning

For those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you would have undoubtedly seen the posts regarding Server 2003 EoL and my battles with my organisation (primarily the service and business owners of the servers) about getting off this out-dated OS and onto something more recent – or in a number of cases, just getting rid of a no-longer-required server… Read more »

The basics all sysadmins need to grok…

In light of this being published on Sysadmin Appreciation Day (psssst, HAPPY SYSADMIN APPRECIATION DAY! ^_^), I thought I’d do a post aimed at us – system administrators! Doing some recent reading, lurking in a few forums and floating about on Twitter, I’ve noticed a number of gripes from other admins regarding things their fellow admins didn’t know that they… Read more »

Quiet times – things to do when you’ve “got time”

One of the things that all sysadmins *LOVE* to be able to say is “It’s so quiet, I’m bored, there’s nothing to do”. In my organisation, the ‘Q’ word and the ‘B’ word are never to be mentioned. They will bring down the wrath of whatever from high atop the thing (kudos to those who get that quote, by the… Read more »

Documentation – or as I like to call it “Information that allows you to take uninterrupted holidays!”

Maybe I was trained differently. Maybe my career in IT started off with a group of OCD people who were just fanatical about information sharing and we’re the odd ones out. Maybe I’m just nuts about writing stuff down. Truthfully, I wish more people in IT were like me, if only for the documentation skills (and because I’m awesome…but more… Read more »