Reflections on the year

December 30, 2012August 31, 2015 Josh Reichardt 5 Comments

A lot happened this year for me, some good some bad (but mostly good) and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the year. I made it to my first technical conference, got my first and second tablet, I started and finished some seemingly daunting work projects, I met, worked with and learned a ton from some incredibly smart people, I grew my network of professional contacts, list goes on and on. One particularly important milestone that I was able to hit was my first full year of blogging. Its been a great journey so far and I am hoping 2013 will be just as great if not better.

One goal of mine was to grow the blog, and I feel like I accomplished that goal although that wasn’t exactly a very specific goal I will admit. Another goal I had in mind when I started doing this was just to be able to help others out with technical issues as much as I could. I am really pleased with how things have come along so far, I have managed to grow my readership and have succeeded in getting in some fresh authors that have made some great contributions, who I would like to thank very much. I would also like to thank all of the other contributors including the readers for helping to grow the blog this past year. I know there will be a lot of work to do in 2013 and I feel like this was a great first full year for the blog. I have had a great deal of fun learning about blogging and cultivating this blog and have no doubts that there will be some great stuff to come in the coming year.

I didn’t expect to learn nearly as much as I did about Exchange, Powershell, Lync, backups and networking. These are the areas that I have been working with primarily in my current role and I will say for the most part I have loved these additional responsibilities. I have fallen in love with Exchange and Powershell and would like to explore these areas and write about them much more in 2013.

There are some exciting areas that will come into focus more next year, which I am excited about. I will be building a full on, clustered virtual environment, a new Exchange 2013 test bed, a Server 2012 Active Directory environment and much more I’m sure. I have also managed to keep my Linux skills sharp (well somewhat) by labbing at home and plan to continue growing my home environment and skills that do not otherwise get any “production” to share my experiences on the blog. I will hopefully be building a home grown SAN, adding a node to my virtual environment to create a cluster and obtaining some network gear so there should be some interesting topics on those fronts as well.

So anyway, I would love to hear any and all feedback from the readers! What should I change? What can I improve on? Which topics are the most informative and the most interesting? Knowing these types of things would be a great way to help build this blog and hopefully continue to grow in 2013. Thank you all again, happy new years!

Becoming a better sysadmin

December 7, 2012August 31, 2015 Josh Reichardt 1 Comment

I typically don’t focus on philosophical topics or the more abstract subjects, but recently I have been reading up on the topic of self improvement and wanted to take some time today to lay out and develop some of the key concepts and ideas that I have found to be helpful so far. Hopefully some of these ideas can be used to help you improve as well in the world of system administration and other future career endeavors.

So this post is going to be more of a work in progress than anything else, since I really just wanted to get some of this stuff written down in order to clear it out of my head. There are literally books that have been written on self improvement and learning strategies so my goal with this isn’t to get every single detail, I just want to hit the high points and how their application to system administration. Here’s what I have so far, feel free to let me know what I’m missing or throw in anything else that might be particularly useful on this subject.

Explicit vs Tacit knowledge

Explicit knowledge can be defined as that gained from books or listening to a lecture. Basically some form of reading or auditory resource.

Tacit knowledge can be defined as that gained from experience, action and practice.

I’d like to start off by making a distinction between different types of knowledge. I believe that the practice of system administration relies heavily on both types and just one type of experience is not enough to be great in this field. They work hand in hand. So for example, reading a ton of books, while useful in its own right will not be nearly as effective as reading books and then applying the knowledge gained from hands on experience. Likewise, if somebody never bothers to pickup a book and relies entirely on hands experiences they will not be as knowledgeable as someone who incorporates both types of knowledge. Although I do feel that much more can be learned from hands on experience in the field of system administration than by books alone.

Types of learning

There has been a good deal of research done on this subject but for the purposes of this post I would like to boil this all down to what are considered the three primary or main styles of learning. The reason I want to focus on these is that they seem to work hand in hand with explicit and tacit knowledge and can be described a bit more easily. Each one of these different styles represents a different sort of idiom to the learning experience. So here they are:

Visual – Learning by watching or reading.
Auditory – Learning by listening.
Kinesthetic – Learning from experience, hands on.

I would argue that employing a good variety of learning and study methods would be the most appropriate way to develop your skills as a sysadmin. But even in my own experiences with learning styles I have realized that I tend to favor a kinesthetic learning approach, and I’m sure others have their own preferences as well. Instead of saying that one is better than another, I would suggest employing all of these types. Take a look at yourself and figure out how you learn best and then decide which method(s) are the most and least helpful and then decide how to make these styles work to your advantage. For example, I feel that I am a weak reader. While I know that reading is important I tend to spend the least amount of time doing just reading if at all possible. Having a piece of reading material as a reference or as an introduction is great. If I don’t quite understand things from reading the next step I like to take is internalizing things by listening to or watching. Finally, once I get a good enough idea about a topic I like to quickly put things into my own experiences. There is some quote about how experience sticks but I am too lazy to look it up. Suffice it say, I tend to remember things much more concretely when I am able to experience them for myself.

Again, this is just in my own experience and everybody is different. I just wanted to give a specific example of one way to utilize different styles of learning. There are many other possibilities and this just happens to be the way I prefer to learn things.

Learning strategies

Now that we have that out of the way, I want to highlight some of the major tactics that I use when attempting to learn a new subject. I definitely use some of these more than others but the point is that you should attempt to utilize as much as you can for your own benefit. Here are some different strategies I came up with that help me greatly when I encounter new and difficult to understand information. Many of these work together or in tandem so they may described more than once.

The Feynman technique – This is as close to the end all be all that there is when it comes to learning. Everybody is probably familiar with this one, but I am guessing they are not familiar with the name. This technique is used to explain or go through a topic as if you were teaching it to somebody else that was just learning about it for the first time. This basically forces you to know what you’re talking about. If you get stuck when trying to explain a particular concept or idea, make a note of what you are struggling with and research and relearn the material until you can confidently explain it. You should be able to explain the subject simply, if your explanations are wordy or convoluted you probably don’t understand it as well as you think.

Reading – I usually like to get an introduction to a topic by reading up on (and bookmarking) what information I feel to be the most informed, whether it be official documentation, RFC’s, books, magazines, respected blogs and authors, etc. As I mentioned before, I would consider myself a weak reader (something that I definitely need to improve on!) so I also like to take very brief notes when something I read seems like it would useful so I can try it out for myself.

Watching/Listening to others – After getting a good idea from reading about a subject I always like to reinforce this by either watching demonstrations, videos, listening to podcasts, lectures or anything else that will show me how to get a better idea of how to do something. When I’m on a long drive for example is a great time to put on a podcast. It kills time as well as improves knowledge at the cost of nothing. Very efficient! The same with videos and demonstrations, the only thing holding you back is the motivation.

Try things for yourself – Sometimes this can be the most difficult approach but definitely can also be the most rewarding, there is nothing better than learning things the hard way. Try things out for yourself in a lab or anywhere that you can practice the concepts that you are attempting to learn and understand.

Take notes – This is important for your own understanding of how things work in a way that you can internalize. I will take notes on simple things like commands I won’t remember, related topics and concepts or even just jotting down keywords quickly that to Google for later on. This goes hand in hand with the reading technique described above, just jotting down very simple, brief notes can be really useful.

Communicate with others – There are plenty of resources out there for getting help and for communicating and discussing what you learn with others. I would suggest looking a /r/sysadmin as a starting point. IRC channels are another great place to ask questions and get help, there are channels for pretty much any subject you can think of out there. There are good sysadmin related channels at irc.freenode.net, if you don’t already utilize IRC I highly suggest you take a look.

Come back later – Give your brain some time to start digesting some of the information and to take a step back and put the pieces together to begin creating a bigger picture. I can’t count how many times I have been working on learning a new concept or subject and felt overwhelmed and stuck until I took a break, did something completely different or thought about something else entirely and came back to the subject later on with a fresh perspective. Sometimes these difficult subjects just take time to fully understand so taking breaks and clearing your head can be very useful.

Sleep on it – Have you ever heard of the term before? This may sound crazy but sometimes if there is a particular problem that I can’t solve I will often times think about it before I go to sleep. I find that by blocking out all outside interference and noise I can much more easily think about it, come up with fresh perspectives and ideas and often times will wake up with an answer the next morning. I think meditation is comparable to this but I know nothing about meditation (I hope to at some point!) so I have to use this method for the time being.

Break stuff – One of the best ways to incorporate a number of these techniques is to intentionally break stuff in your own setups. Triple check to be sure that you aren’t breaking anything important first and then go ahead and give it a try. By forcing yourself to fix things that are broken you develop a much deeper and more intimate relationship with the way things work, why they work the way that they do and how things get broken to begin with. The great thing about using this method is that it is almost always useful for something in the future, whether it be the troubleshooting skills, the Googling skills or the specific knowledge in the particular area that needed to be fixed.

Practice, practice, practice – The more I read about becoming better at something the more I am convinced that you have to practice like an absolute maniac. I think for system administration this can partially come from practical job experience but it also comes from dedicated study and lab time. The hands on component is where most of your practice will come from and becoming better doesn’t just happen, it takes cultivation and time, just like with any other skill. Stick with it and never stop learning and improving on your skills through practice and experience.

The power of “Why?”

November 8, 2012August 31, 2015 James Cort 6 Comments

I’m going go steer away from the very technical “how-to” type things I’ve written in the past and instead give a little bit of job advice to anyone who finds themselves in a technical role for the first time.

Sooner or later, we all have to deal with technical support-type questions.

It’s very tempting in these cases to take everything you’re told at face value and ask simple yes/no questions for more detail. On the face of it, this makes some sense – they can be easy to understand, quick to answer and get you to the root cause very quickly.

I would argue that they’re terrible questions. Yes, sometimes you get useful answers, but as often as not you get:

Answers that are downright wrong. Maybe the customer misunderstood the question, maybe they didn’t understand it at all but were afraid to admit ignorance.
Answers that aren’t wrong, but aren’t terribly helpful. Example: “No, I haven’t seen any error messages” (but considering my computer hasn’t actually got as far as logging me in that shouldn’t be terribly surprising).
Drawn into an argument. Example: “I’ve already told you what the problem is, now are you going to fix it?!”

Instead, try “Why?”. “Why do you think you’ve got a virus?” “Why are you having trouble with the website?”. It forces your customer to elaborate and drastically reduces the risk of confrontation.

Podcasts for System Administrators

June 25, 2012August 31, 2015 Josh Reichardt 6 Comments

Over the years I have slowly built up a collection of resources that I find valuable in keeping my skill set sharp and my abilities fresh. One of the best resources, for me anyways, happens to be listening to podcast’s. Podcast’s are a great learning tool, especially if you can get into the habit of listening to them frequently. It is surprising how much of the things from those podcast’s stick in my head. I tend to like listening to a podcast when I am driving or out by yourself on a walk/run or just doing some other physical activity. I have found that this is a great method for me to escape from work and clear my head by engaging in some sort of activity while listening to a podcast.

I have experimented and listened to a wide variety of podcasts during this period of time. Some of them have been less than great, but for the most part I think that I have found a good balance of technical and general level podcasts relating to a variety of topics within system administration and I feel like sharing the ones that I have gained the most from in the past few years.

So here is my list (in no particular order).

Security Now!
The title pretty much sums things up. This is a video podcast (but audio only is just as good IMO) that focuses in on what is happening in the world of security in IT and computing. There is a good mixture of broad technical information and news as well as great nitty gritty detail (for example deep dives into topics such as how TCP/IP works, which I highly recommend). The co-host Steve Gibson does a great job of explaining things in detail, especially when it comes to very complicated and complex topic. He has a brilliant way of making these topic easy to understand and not overly confusing. Even though Leo Laporte annoys the living shit out of me, he and Gibson make a good pair and do a good job covering security in such a way that makes the topics in this category interesting.

Hak5
This video podcast is billed as a hacker oriented podcast. A lot of interesting hacker and Linux topics are covered in this podcast as well as great in depth interviews among a variety of other things. I personally love the cast of this podcast, which I believe makes it more enjoyable to watch. I have learned probably more tips and tricks from this podcast than from any other and the format is in a style that is humorous as well as informative so it doesn’t usually get very boring. I highly recommend this podcast if you are interested in hacking or Linux or other cool, little known about topics of interest.

Packet Pushers
If you are a hardcore networking guy, then this is a great podcast for you! I have only recently been listening to this podcast but I can’t say enough good things about it. The material is just about as technical as you can get, which is great for me. The hosts and guests are top notch as well, as nearly if not all of them are prominent figures in the networking world. I don’t know how they do it, but every one of their shows seems to keep my attention even if they are discussing a topic that is over my head. I learn a ton from every episode I listen to and, as I said, if you have anything to do with networking then I would strongly suggest you check this podcast out.

RunAs Radio
This is another great sysadmin podcast plus Rich Campbell’s voice soothes me. The people on this podcast are top notch as well, the guests are always interesting and the content is also very detailed and technical. I have to admit that I tend to skip some of these just because they sometimes cover topics that don’t really pique my interest entirely but that being said, all of the shows are well done and informative and I’m sure would be of great value to others that had more of an interest in these areas. This podcast usually isn’t drawn out like others, which is another reason I like it because it doesn’t give me a headache after listening to it.

FLOSS Weekly
I just found this podcast and am excited to try it out, it looks like there is a ton of interesting stuff in this podcast. The main focus of the show is anything and everything open source. There are interviews with figures is the open source world as well as news and other open source tools. I will update this post once I listen to this podcast a few times to give more information about it.

PowerScripting Podcast
This show focuses on the world of Powershell. I find this show to be helpful for me because I work in a Windows environment and I absolutely love Powershell for administration, chastise me if you must. It is great to have a podcast that focuses on Powershell because I feel like it gives me an advantage over others just because I can keep an inside track on what kind of developments and other things are happening. This show covers news, interesting topics within the Powershell universe and also have interesting and informative guests on the show as well. If you are a Windows admin or have anything to do with Powershell, I suggest you check this podcast out.

Podnutz Pro
This podcast takes you into the world of small to mid size business administration. One of the co-hosts works for and MSP and goes through the details of his work. It is interesting to see the point of view of somebody working in an MSP admin role because it is much different than that of a typical sysadmin. There is a lot of good technical content in this show as well (can you tell I like the technical content?) and although there isn’t much in the way of outside guests for content they manage to do a pretty good job in finding interesting topics to cover in depth. I must warn though, this content can sometimes get a little bit dry as well as dragged out at times though because the hosts of the show are admins, not radio show hosts. Still recommended, just not all of it is as worthwhile as some other podcast’s.

The Linux Action Show!
Hands down the most informative Linux podcast I have come across. They cover relevant topics, interview people in the industry and just do a great job overall. The content they cover is interesting and the hosts of the show seem to be well informed and are entertaining as well. They are nerds but they are great hosts and don’t have any trouble delivering their content and keep things fresh. The delivery is crisp and smooth and their shows seem to flow very well. I highly recommend this podcast to anybody working with Linux on a daily basis or even for people new to the Linux scene, the shows are done in such a way that pros and newbies should both feel welcomed.

TechSNAP
This is another podcast that I was recently turned on to so don’t have much to report on this one yet. This show is similar to Security Now in some ways because it covers a lot of interesting security news. My favorite part about this show though is that its not overdone with ads and they really don’t go on too many tangents unrelated to IT. Another cool fact about the show is that some of the less common topics are covered, like a lot of talk about BSD and ZFS and how to use them, which has been helpful to me. I recommend this podcast for anybody that enjoys show like Security Now as it is fairly technical but is really interesting.

The UC Architects
This is a great show that is relatively new that I just recently picked up on. This show covers all things Unified Communication, focusing primarily on Lync and Exchange but also covers many other topics in the Microsoft world as well. There are some seriously smart people on this show as nearly all of the hosts and guests either are MVP’s, MCM’s or work for Microsoft. I like this show because I have found it gives a great glimpse into the UC world that is not really covered very well elsewhere, it is more of a niche I would say and this is the place to go if you have anything at all to do with Exchange, Lync or any other Microsoft UC product. This show has it all; in depth technical conversation, reviews, news and much more.

Stack Exchange Podcast
This podcast covers a number of interesting topics that revolve primarily around running a startup and everything that goes along with it. Great guest interviews, tips and tricks about Stack Exchange, and a wide range of topics. Here is a description from the site: “The Stack Exchange team gives you an unparalleled look inside the building and running of one of the web’s hottest startups: Stack Exchange. Instead of the typical podcast format, Jeff & Joel are joined by a different guest each week as they discuss the strategy and direction of Stack Exchange, the decisions they’ve made about the community and where things are going next.”

Healthy Paranoia
This is one of the newer IT related podcasts that I have found that I actually enjoy. It presents some very technical information yet it isn’t difficult to follow. The hosts and guests all have a solid foundation in security, so the quality of this podcast is pretty top notch. The topics are broad enough though that you don’t have to be a super hardcore security pro to follow them, therefore the topics are interesting and are usually very relevant to what system administrators deal with in many security related areas. I definitely recommend this podcast to any sysadmin that either has an interest in security or for any security pros out there looking to boost their knowledge, the show is accommodating and appealing to multiple different areas of IT.

BSD Now
A Weekly BSD Podcast – News, Interviews and Tutorials. “We advocate the use of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonflyBSD and PC-BSD. Our show aims to be helpful and informative for new users that want to learn about them, while still being entertaining for the people who are already pros.”

DevOps Cafe
Interviews with interesting members of DevOps community.

The Joe Rogan Experience
Okay, so this podcast isn’t exactly geared towards system administrators necessarily but this show is really good and is hilarious (Joe Rogan is a professional comedian) and covers a variety of very interesting topics and features some genuinely funny, interesting and smart people. There are even some IT pros that have been on the show, check out episode #361 if you want to listen to the VP of Cloud Security at Trend Micro talk about coffee, for example. This podcast is a great addition to your collection if you want to learn something and be entertained but aren’t up for something that is too technical, its more of a show that you can just turn on and have in the background, which can be nice sometimes.

That’s it for now, I will be adding to and updating this list as I find more interesting podcast’s but I have to say these are among my favorites to listen to and watch right now. They all have some sort of unique quality to them yet they all tie into system administration one way or another. I’m sure there are other ones out there so if you know of any other good sysadmin podcast’s let me know and I will check them out and hopefully add them to this list.

Resources for System Administrators

September 22, 2011August 31, 2015 Josh Reichardt 7 Comments

I’ve seen a lot of forum posts recently about the best places to keep up with news, get help, network with others, and so on in the IT world. Now I know that what resource you seek out really depends on what you’re trying to do, but my general rule of thumb is to seek out new resources and use them all the time. I can’t count the number of times I have been listening to a podcast on the way to work and have gotten ideas, or thumbing through a magazine and going, “What? That exists?” And then going off and trying it out on my own, eventually incorporating it into my bag of tricks.

At this point I have yet to find a comprehensive list that goes over all the various tools for getting these resources so I have really been focusing the past couple of weeks on compiling my own list and set of resources, trying to think of the most useful media. Even with this list I’m sure I am missing a number of helpful resources but I will try to go over the main ideas here, hopefully adding more detail in future blog posts and expanding details about them in those posts. So here is the list:

RSS Feeds — Dump them all into Google Reader or Atom Reader, start your day off by going through these. Incredibly helpful.
Online forums/social outlets and communities
- Reddit — Great place to “talk shop” exchange ideas, etc. Make sure to look up /r/sysdamin
- Superuser — Get help with computer issues
- Serverfault — Get help with system administration and desktop support
- Ubuntuforums — All things Ubuntu
- Techexams — Career help as well as advice on certifications
IRC Channels
Mailing Lists
Local Linux User Groups — Google should be helpful for finding them.
LOPSA — A community of system administrators.
SAGE — Another community for system administrators.
Podcasts
- Security Now!
- Podnutz Pro
- RunAs Radio
- Hak5
- My Hard Drive Died
- Packet Pushers
- PowerScripting Podcast
Industry Magazines

Linux Journal
Windows IT Pro
Hacker Monthly

Books

Time Management for System Administrators
The Practice of System and Network Administration

Conferences — A great way to learn and meet new people.

Black Hat
DEF CON
PhreakNIC
ToorCon
ShmooCon
DerbyCon
Pycon
SkyDogCon

Home Labs — Build a Virtual server, test out the latest and greatest.
Technet — Subscribe to technet to compliment your home lab with Microsoft software.
Personal Project(s) — Create your own project ,website or blog, anything to keep your skills fresh.
Twitter — Keep up with a person or what is going on in projects.
Open Source Project — Contribute to a cause that you believe in. Gain tons of skill and experience.

What do you use to stay in loop and improve your tech skills? I would love to add to this list.