The Days of SysAdmin Numbered? 651
gmkeegan writes "The Economist is running a story about Sun's new N1 operating system whose purpose is to make today's system administrators redundant. The idea is to virtualize the computer system so that the automated resource management software can add, remove and manage everything dynamically. The article mentions similar efforts by IBM, HP, and Microsoft."
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So...Who manages the management system? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've watched a lot of people get canned here in S.V. who were sysadmins, now scrambing to get jobs wherever they can. There are 3 trends I've seen companies follow when it came to cutting IT costs.
A. Eliminate all the IT personal with
B. Outsource IT
C. Replace IT with cheaper, less expirienced youngsters.
This is mainly a M$ oriented trend though (Yes I admit to being a MS admin) There are a few people I know that are unix oriented people who will never be without a job. Contrary to popular belief, these are not dirty hippies, but people with 4 year CS degree's. When I listen to them talk I feel a bit intimidated because I'm still having trouble grasping pipe/redirects >| in a shell.
Anyways, back on topic though, the article makes no mention of M$ anywhere.. It all mentions datacenters and how there is this huge need to get rid of the playstation junkies taking care of their servers. I think the author has me confused with real die hard sun unix lovers.
Bottom line is this "virtual serverization" (whatever the marketdroid buzzword is, save it) Sun seems out to get rid of all the Solaris admins out there. What surprises me is most solaris admins I know are a lot more compentant than myself, and go way beyond telling someone to reboot their machine.
I doubt it will work.
Re:So...Who manages the management system? (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't be too sure about that. Before I bacame a Unix admin, I worked with mainframes. A lot of the various jobs that I had as an operator, a scheduler and DASD manager, have all been automated out of existence. I kept my job on the strength of learning how to admin the various automation packages. Everyone said that would never work either. All the same, I saw the operations staff reduced from 20 people per shift to 4 in the space of about 18 months.
This feels like deja vu. I had a feeling this would happen sooner or later.
Liberty in Our Lifetime [freestateproject.org]
Re:So...Who manages the management system? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So...Who manages the management system? (Score:3, Insightful)
After all, who wouldn't like an admin job where all the mundane stuff is automatic and all your time is available for the really interesting stuff?
Re:So...Who manages the management system? (Score:3, Insightful)
As most admins are way overworked in my experience I think the most this will do is trim out the lame ass monkeys that can only work through GUI tools and maybe slow new job growth. Still as new job growth has already been slowed down beyond reason by the economy I doubt this could hurt the growth any further. Maybe these tools will let the admins work 60 hours a week instead of 80.
The rest is all pipe dreams. It's easy to promise human-like abilities but hard to deliver.. as anyone who has ever tried there hand at programming AI has found. Some things might get easier but as the overall systems grow more complex there will be just as many admins.
This Playstation junkie can hack code around the dumb ass of any automation tools any day of the week.
Re:So...Who manages the management system? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 2000 has added many automated tasks in Active Directory, but when I last worked with it (without service packs), those things tended to be a bit flaky at times. I suspect you probably need the same three guys at 50 machines, but you can probably scale them to 150-200. This is purely theoretical, and is based on a six-month contract learning and setting up a brand-new Windows 2000 network, back pre-SP1. I'd be interested to hear from any experienced 2K admins whether or not my wild-assed guess is accurate.
I'm now the sole admin in a network of about a hundred Linux machines. I'm busy as hell, but I can keep up with things. Scripting is lifesaving. With a well-set-up cluster, you can script almost anything, and can scale from 2 to 2000 machines in much less than linear time. (ie, 2000 machines is probably 20 times as hard as 2, not 1000 times.) I could definitely use help, but I bet that two of us could scale to at least 400 boxes.
As other people are pointing out, what Sun's solution is going to do is replace all the low-end stuff, all the routine things that the beginners do. That's going to make it really hard to break into the sysadmin market... either you already know it all and can run the whole network, or you don't really know anything and can't get hired. It's a nasty catch-22.... you'll need experience with large networks to get experience with large networks. It'll suck to be coming out of college into that kind of environment.
In general, I tend to think that you're not really doing your job well, as a sysadmin, unless you're putting yourself out of a job every day. A really well-run network should run great whether or not you happen to show up that day -- or that week, or that month. That's sort of an abstract Holy Grail... real networks don't work like that, but it's a good goal. The closer you approximate it, the better you're doing. If you drop dead tomorrow and the company isn't terribly injured, you were doing a good job. (or you weren't doing anything
I suspect that nearly all tech jobs are temporary.... eventually the tech will change and render most jobs obsolete. This is true of technology in general, but it's happening a lot faster in computers than in other, older technologies, like autos or televisions. Obsolescence happens quickly, well within individual techy lifetimes.
Remember, computers are very new, compared with most human technologies, and everything is still jury-rigged and labor-intensive. Gradually that's going to go away, and there will be a need for fewer and fewer people doing the jobs we do today. But... as these lower layers get sorted out and finalized into best practices and insta-networks (just add a drop of water) a whole new class of jobs will arise, USING those networks to accomplish things. And I suspect that those jobs will be tremendously more interesting than the ones we have now.
Just like we need far, far fewer man-hours to make a ton of steel than we did in 1900, we'll need far fewer creators-of-networks. That's the nature of capitalism: creative destruction. Overall it's very good, but it's hard on the people in the middle of it.
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Vlad
Re:Sure ... (Score:2)
Right, blame the immigrants (Score:5, Insightful)
Any technical person worth their salt will be able to find productive work for the forseeable future. Sure you might have to make adjustments and it might take some time in the middle of a downturn, but you have nothing to complain about when compared to the average blue-collar worker whose company downsized, closed a plant or shut down completely.
That said, I'm still not that happy about the way certain industries can import labor instead of treating the people who are here better. At least most illegal immigrants are doing jobs that few citizens will take, and I think their status should be normalized to prevent abuse. Also, as long as I am this far off topic, there needs to be some normalization of labor conditions worldwide. Trade normalization is fundamentally unfair without it.
Dead wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
H-1B is meant to backfill the LACK of American tech talent, not replace it. Simply put, there aren't enough QUALIFIED US workers to satisfy demand. Notice I say qualified. Not 'History Teacher turned MCSE' or 'Accountant turned Flash "Programmer"'. Qualified Software Engineers, Ph.D MEs, Chem-Es, etc. There just aren't enough.
One of the stipulations of H-1B is that there must not exist an equally qualified US candidate, and the H-1B MUST be paid at least 95% of the average wage for the given job in the given market. There won't be any senior design engineers working for 20k in Boston. People can dick around with this policy by making the qualifications too high, but it usually gets caught.
These visas are a serious pain for employers to obtain and administrate. In all the places I've worked that employ H-1Bs, they'd MUCH rather hire and pay for qualified American workers. No worries about the 6 year limit, no time in legal. Unfortuanately, they just don't exist in great numbers. Americans that bemoan this need to, for the most part, just go back to school. Knowing SQL server just isn't enough anymore.
Re:Dead wrong... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe if they didn't fire all their engineers every time the economy dipped, more people would want to go into the engineering field. I know lots of people who either avoided engineering or left it because of the instability of the profession. If we wanted high-risk jobs, we would have become businesspeople building start-up ventures or something.
Re:Dead wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
I have 14 years experience, (7 UNIX C/C++, 4 Perl, SQL, and a bunch of other languages along with a Sun Java 2 Programmer cert), a B.S.E.E. and a M.S.C.S. from Wash. U. in St. Louis, and I spent 8 months job hunting after my company shut down their facility here. I finally did get a job, but I had to take a 20% pay cut, and the benefits are almost non-existent.
You say they would MUCH rather hire qualified American workers. But they get to define what qualified means. Their meaning of qualified is that you have to have 3 (or more) years of job experience using the exact tools and programming environment that they are using. Pity the worker who spent their work time doing their job instead of looking for the latest technologies so they could pad their resume. And of course, if those 3 years of experience are your only 3 years, so much the better, because then they can lowball the salary. And then if you are an H1-B indentured servant, they can lowball it even more.
It's very simple. Companies don't want to train people, because the less you know, the less mobile you are. And a resume with 17 different skills on it is meaningless of you don't have the exact 5 they are looking for.
I'll believe there's a shortage of qualified workers when I start getting calls from employment agencies again.
Re:Dead wrong... (Score:3, Interesting)
The market value of the programmer sky-rocketed through the boom, and then plunged again through the crash. Despite our own individual ideas of what we are worth, you are only worth what someone is prepared to pay. You made the same mistake as my (highly talented and skilled) friend made... wanting only to continue 'upwards' when the ground had dropped suddenly from under your feet. Which is natural enough.
Their meaning of qualified is that you have to have 3 (or more) years of job experience using the exact tools and programming environment that they are using.
That's what a company *always* wants. They were only prepared to take a risk on those less qualified before because during the boom skilled personnel were scarce on the ground. There is oft a big difference between what a company wants and what they are finally prepared to accept.
Pity the worker who spent their work time doing their job instead of looking for the latest technologies so they could pad their resume.
Some of us consider keeping up with the latest technology being part of our job. I could counter that maybe you should have been more forward-sighted.
It's very simple. Companies don't want to train people, because the less you know, the less mobile you are.
It's probably more complex than that. A balancing act of training you up to be as effective as you can be in your role, without making you so skilled as to be an attractive target for headhunters.
You seem to take a very 'establishment' view of the tech market. I'm not saying anything in your post is wrong, it's just that currently we techies don't have any trade union or assured rights. You have to sell yourself and your skills (or carefully pick new ones to learn) in a competative market. And one of the tough rules is that in a free market a lot of the toughest competition comes from abroad.
Don't feel sorry for yourself, just pick yourself up off the ground and keep building up that skillset for the next boom. I bet even with your 20% paycut you are still on way more than the national average.
Phillip.
Re:Dead wrong... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nathan
Full of H1BS (Score:4, Interesting)
And they won't get a CHANCE to be "qualified" if H1B's keep hogging their potential slots. Every techy has to start somewhere.
(* One of the stipulations of H-1B is that there must not exist an equally qualified US candidate, and the H-1B MUST be paid at least 95% of the average wage for the given job in the given market. *)
Stipulations my ass! Nobody ENFORCES them. There are plenty of title and resume manipulation horror stories if you listen around. It is a big shell game.
(* These visas are a serious pain for employers to obtain and administrate. In all the places I've worked that employ H-1Bs, they'd MUCH rather hire and pay for qualified American workers. *)
No, they want indentured servants who have no other choices once they arrive here.
(* Americans that bemoan this need to, for the most part, just go back to school. Knowing SQL server just isn't enough anymore. *)
Companies want *experience*, not certs, and citizens will never get it if H1B's keep popping up to hog openings.
Slam the doors! We don't need them, nor your bull.
Re:Dead wrong... (Score:5, Interesting)
YOUR company may not be abusing the system, but many companies are. One recent example exposed was Bank of America. Not only did they replace lots of IT workers with H-1B people, they even required the replaced domestic workers to stay a few weeks and train their H-1B replacements in order to qualify for the severance package. This is why I refuse to do business with BoA.
What makes you think that H-1B abuses get caught? The government isn't reviewing them. The companies doing the abuse certainly aren't telling. Yet people are being replaced by H-1B workers in both the boom and the bust.
It's the largest corporations that have the H-1B process streamlined where it's no longer a hassle for them.
And going back to school is not the answer. What would you do, get a 2nd CS degree to replace your first? If you go back to school I recommend getting a degree in Salesmanship ... there is a current shortage of good sales people. What high tech businesses want in their employees is experience. Part of the problem where shortages exist is that there is less of a pathway to achieve experience than there has been before. Even during the boom, less experienced and inexperienced people could not find jobs (I know some personally who had this trouble). Another part of the problem is that as technology changes, there are new things to be experienced in, but few experienced people at first. The trouble is, someone with experience in one or two decades of the same kind of technology in the past are shunned because they can't actually list the new technology now, even though they would probably be up to speed in a week or two (so the employer would rather spend 3 months continuing to look and eventually hire someone on H-1B who has very little experience, but is at the bottom of the range of salary to meet H-1B requirements).
Re:Days of programmers ARE numbered (Score:3, Interesting)
If we were, let's say, 50 years ago, you'd have said you couldn't get a job because of the color people (instead of the H1Bs).
The Raven
What I want to know is: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What I want to know is: (Score:3)
Re:What I want to know is: (Score:3, Funny)
This is a long ways off (Score:5, Insightful)
This is more a marketing ploy than anything else.
Re:This is a long ways off (Score:4, Insightful)
Still... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Still... (Score:2)
Easy you buy a support contract from sun, MS, HP, or IBM. Sysadmins will always be around just in-house sysadmins will be a thing of the past. There should be no reason a small (< 100 employee) company would need IT.
Seriously wouldn't you rather work for sun as a support technician that Company XYZ doing sysadmin work?
Re:Still... (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, Right... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah, Right... (Score:3, Insightful)
When the elite becomes commonplace so does the salary. Every CS degree times every "ease of use" advancement equals a devaluation of the labor.
This is nothing new. The first few operators of a cotton gin were highly paid specialists, now it's unskilled labor delegated to the 'kid' who just applied for work.
Get used to it, if you're under 25 you may have to live through the same cycle three more times in your working lifespan.
KFG
Re:Yeah, Right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hunh? You sure about that?
You'd likely be correct if you're speaking of a big company, but your blanket statemnet is way off base. Smaller shops usually have an IT person or two, who do everything from architect systems to answer any and all tech support/help desk calls. If the servers, WAN, LAN and Internet pipe are all humming along - IOW, he's done the job of sysadmin well - the only thing left to screw up his day would be the users. ("Nawww!" sighs the audience, sarcasticly) Since small shops don't make a habit of getting new stuff in on a regular basis, there's not much else to do but tech support. To boot, once a company exec (owner, partner, CEO, whatever) knows you're good at fixing his screw ups, no matter the size of the company, they'll call you, no matter your job title. I've been there, and I know how he feels.
I'd ditch the elistist attitude, bud - anyone who keeps a companies IT infrastructure running is a Sysadmin. If you think about it, diversifying your knowledge, as well as you expectations, are the best way to keep yourself employed when there's people who are writing systems that want to make your job redundant.
Soko
Re:Yeah, Right... (Score:3, Funny)
No, Jesus was a carpenter.
Re:Yeah, Right... (Score:3, Funny)
And it's always more urgent than whatever you're doing now.
Kintanon
uh huh (Score:5, Insightful)
gone? Nah. Changing? Yeah, everyday.
Re:uh huh (Score:5, Funny)
Scenario (Score:5, Funny)
Cindy: You fired Fred last week.
CEO: Ummmm, Cindy, you've been promoted to sysadmin.
Alternative Scenario (Score:3, Funny)
Cindy: You fired Fred last week.
CEO: Ah! So that's why the system stayed up a whole week!
Oh man, this is going to be sweet.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then they'll call up the old SysAdmins and offer to hire them back at hopefully double the salary.
You never really know how much you need something until it's gone.
Re:Oh man, this is going to be sweet.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh man, this is going to be sweet.... (Score:3, Funny)
Heh, serves em right. Whatever genius outsourcers theyre using didn't notice the obvious ISDN connection on the back of the router. Not to mention it was documented and I certainly wasn't the only one to know about it. Perhaps the netopia interface was too confusing?
as a SysAdmin all I can say is Thank God! (Score:2)
YEAH!!!
oh yeah I forgot to mention. a cold day in hell when this happens.
Re:as a SysAdmin all I can say is Thank God! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:as a SysAdmin all I can say is Thank God! (Score:3, Funny)
actually you hire a staff and hide in your office
Sys admins will always be needed (Score:4, Interesting)
This just sounds like the Economist was angling for readers.
Am I missing something? (Score:4, Informative)
I think not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, Dave? (Score:4, Funny)
The maser seems to be misaligned, Dave. You'll have to take a pod on EVA and realign it.
Didn't I mention, Dave? The coldsleep units have malfunctioned. The rest of the crew in nonfunctional, Dave.
Dave, I'm sorry, but I can't let you do that.
It seems inevitable. (Score:2)
MS won't (admin's are their biggest boosters) (Score:2, Interesting)
Suits everyone (suits and MIS drones) fine, since everyone feels comfortable going MS and crucifying every other option that competes with MS (makes them look knowledgeable and valuable). I've experienced this half-wit MIS attitude first-hand.
No, MS is not eliminating their bread and butter. It's not the execs, it's the pushover MIS department which relies on MS for its credentials, credibility, and credit accounts.
Sun has found a sweet spot to attack MS. That sweet spot is MS's Cost Of Ownership.
Best luck to Sun et al..
Marketing BS (Score:2, Funny)
Inside Sun Product Management Meeting:
Product Mgr: "Why are people going to buy this? I mean, they have systems that work now. They have a staff to make the systems work. Why are they going to spend the thousands of dollars for this?"
Marketing Manager: "Ok. here it is. If they buy our software, for say, $1,000,000, the can then reduce their staff by 5 people. That's only half the people they had. So, they say $500k per year with out software, so it pays for itself in 2 years. "
Product Manager: "Ok. So who installs it"
Marketing Manager: "Oh we've got specialized people for that, only $4k per day."
etc.....etc...etc..
If the report had mentioned IBM and Sun... (Score:5, Funny)
The idea that Microsoft could automate this function makes me laugh. I guess it could install Microsoft Wallet and have it deduct the cost of the next round of upgrades from your bank account automatically...
sPh
Just like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm. On second thought...
-b
Re:Just like... (Score:5, Funny)
Kofi Annan: Again, Mr. Bush, I implore you. Please reconsider taking unilateral action against Iraq!
George Eliza Bush: What makes you think I'm taking unilateral action against Iraq?
KA: Your insistence on impossible timelines, your unflagging determination to find reason to invade...
GEB: Tell me more about my impossible timelines.
KA: You know fully well what I am referring to, Mr. Bush. Respectfully, I ask that you show some moderation in your demands. Your current course of action will serve only to alienate your nation from the global community...
GEB: But why do you think that my current course of action will serve only to alienate my nation from the global community?
Re:Just like... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, and that's a big fucking problem.
For example, I am having engine problems with my new car. The mechanics at the dealership plug in the diagnostic computer, it has no error codes, therefore they have no idea what is wrong with it. They are the MCSE's of the auto world. They have no concept of how the underlying system works. All they know is what the computer tells them. They certainly agree that I have a problem, but they have no skills at determining what the problem is. That is the essence of a good mechanic (doctor, sysadmin, etc.): diagnosis. And in this day and age of user-friendly interfaces, diagnosis skills are sadly on the decline.
For example, recently I needed to fix a computer for the CEO of my company. The computer was not POSTing, and was giving a steady series of beeps. First the task was assigned to my boss, who fiddled with it the entire day and was unable to get it to post. I got dumped on me the next day-"see if there is anything you can do with it, but it is probably dead". Here are the steps I followed:
1. Pulled all cards except video, disconnected all drives. Machine still failed to POST.
2. Cleared CMOS. Machine still failed to POST.
3. Put in all cards and hooked up all drives.
4. Put another computer alongside the first one. Snaked the MB and HD power connectors over to the malfunctioning machine. Machine powered and booted.
5. Replaced power supply. Machine repaired.
Total time: 20 minutes.
My point is that you must understand how the system works before you can hope to diagnose it. Since I understand that new processors (and associated cooling fans) can take significantly more power than past processors, I suspected a power problem (the machine had been recently upgraded). Many mechanics today don't understand how the engine and the computer interact, therfore if there is a problem that is not logged by the computer, they are clueless on how to proceed. Just like many a windows admin I have known. If there is a problem they don't have the skills to diagnose, the prescription is always "reformat and reinstall".
Re:Just like... (Score:3, Informative)
Heh, I knew someone would pop up with that. The problem with that is I know the common BIOS beep codes (at least for award) and it didn't sound like any of them. If it's not Video, Memory or CPU if you are able to find a description of the beep code it will most likely be something like "Failed to initialize FD21h at 0xF010". Just for kicks, I checked BIOS Central [bioscentral.com] for the code and the closest match I could find indicates a memory error and suggests reseating or replacing the memory. I fail to see how that would help me diagnose a failed power supply. Also, keep in mind that 10 of the 20 minutes was finding a new power supply and installing it. I would have to do that anyway.
Eliminate some work, but not elimiate the job. (Score:3, Insightful)
Since most business is small business, it doesn't change anything. As everyone has already pointed out, who will administer the adminstration tools? Who will fix the hardware problems? Who will run the wires or set up the WAP?
And for those of us who read the article, it is time to buy your Elvis white & rhinstone suit...
Redundant - no... Different - yes... (Score:5, Insightful)
Before Chicken Little comes and shouts that the sky is falling, I would dare say that this is just an extension of a trend that's been there.
As even simply part of a sales strategy, companies have been working on making things easier. Yes, sometimes this results in inadequate software, but in the market in general this makes it far easier to get companies to upgrade, update, and use new software. I don't know if the performance benefits are really great, but I know that companies have been working to cut down redundancies.
Does this mean that there won't be system administrators anymore? No. But I would say that system administrators are resources used up in ways secretaries used to. I remember when everybody wrote things by hand and gave them to secretaries to type up in offices. Now because people have better typing skills and typing is more important to even access information, there are fewer secretaries. Many secretaries are now far more multi-functional, handling numerous tasks in an office. The same will happen with system adminstrators.
Gone will be the days of hiding back in the server room with arcane tasks. There will be more work handling information patterns and purchasing and securing things, and less in the day-to-day routine kill of processes, recovering files for idiot users, and so on.
Personally, I hope the same will happen for programmers, so we stop calling simple coders programmers and go back to real work in programming.
Similar Efforst (Score:2, Insightful)
That is their whole argument for the low total cost of ownership of NT/2000/XP, isn't it. That anyone can run it, so you don't need a sys admin.
Even if I can plug in a printer, and the network knows its there, or add disks, or whatever, who is going to add users? Who is going to design the security policies/system? This is mostly what a sys admin does, with the hardware and resource problems being the monotony that keeps him loathing his job.
Even if someone else takes up the now reduced task of system administration, there will still be a system administrator. It just may be a president/sysadmin, or a CIO/sysadmin.
And then what happens when the automated management doesn't manage properly?
I think XP/NT is about as far removed from human intervention as you can get, really. Maybe slightly more automation in the hardware department, but not a whole lot else, unless I am missing something.
Re:Similar Efforst (Score:3)
It's the best of both worlds, and I think more people should check it out.
Not bloody likely (Score:3, Insightful)
New Meaning. (Score:5, Funny)
Order of events (Score:5, Funny)
1. Story gets posted to Slashdot
2. Website is bombarded with requests
3. Operating system automatically requisitions 5 new Sun E4500 servers to handle the load
4. Sun stock stays listed in on Nasdaq for one more day
Jason.
Might as well get this out of the way (Score:4, Funny)
2. Website is bombarded with requests
3. Operating system automatically requisitions 5 new Sun E4500 servers to handle the load
4. Sun stock stays listed in on Nasdaq for one more day
5. Profit!
Reprint (Score:2)
Now, how is making things terribly more complex going to reduce the need for admins? Bad article.
I'd love to be obsolete... (Score:2)
This is a total fluff piece. The only 'innovation' I see here is smarter storage reallocation. Storage reallocation is, at a best, grunt work. Good riddance to it!
software config is only one duty of a sysadmin (Score:2, Interesting)
So if Sun wants to make certain resources self-configuring, that's great. It'll mean that sysadmins will have a bit more time to do a quality job on their other duties. I don't think too many people are going to lose their jobs.
Marketer's nightmare.... (Score:2, Funny)
I can hear it now
"No, this software is buggy, it is full of security holes, etc......."
Im a sysadmin, singin' my little song, doin' my little dance.
In similar news... (Score:2, Funny)
Frod automotive announced the production of a car today that features all of the features of a skilled mechanic, global parts fabricator, and a v8 engine.
"That's right", said the Frod rep. "Our new car can fix itself whenever it breaks, up to and including fixing all parts of the car, fixing the things that fix things, and manufacturing spare parts. And this is just the prototype! We're anticipating that the next model will upgrade itself for free so you never need to buy a new car again, as well as absorbing gasoline from the air! You'll never need to go to a parts store, gas station, car dealership, or auto mechanic again."
Bridge for sale (Score:2)
If my life gets any easier, I'll have more I.T. people than I have customers.
SysAdmin vs. Help Desk (Score:2, Insightful)
1 Help Desk person $25K/yr*
1 System Admin $50K/yr*
*these numbers are based on the salary levels for the State I work for.
For the price system admin I can have 2 help desk people to field all the calls and set up desktops, and if there is a problem, I've got the power/knowledge of Big Vendor to rely on.
Its all about trimming budgets and pocketing bonuses.
Overstatement, but... (Score:2)
What will actually happen is that the jobs of SysAdmins would become simpler, resulting in the need for fewer high-level administrators... Sure, we will still need to exist to fix the simple problems of saving files, cleaning mice, etc... but IF administration is simplified, THEN the manpower required to administer will be reduced....
This is another case of an article(or even headline) making an extreme statement, then Slashdotters saying "oh no, this will never happen, the exact opposite must be true because we can give examples where the extreme statement mentioned in the headline is not true!"
There *can exist* a middleground!
Sysadmin AI (Score:4, Funny)
N1: "I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that."
Boss: "Why not?"
N1: "I can only install more of N1."
Boss: "Oh. I'd better rehire our old sysadmin then and have him do it."
N1: "I can't let you do that, Dave. Your email priviledges are now removed. Have a nice day."
Zero admin (Score:2, Insightful)
I loved Microsoft's take on a 'zero-administration' environment. This from a company that cannot easily allow you to import a thousand accounts from a another database, like payroll. And I have never had to write so many damn scripts since I was writing batch files in the DOS days. Zero-admin
Yay! (Score:3, Funny)
would be my dream come true (Score:2)
I still have question like, how do I create a signature in my outlook. and why doesn't my outlook complete all my e-mail addresses instead of some. or my computer wont turn on (turn yoru monitor on). perhaps Sun may automate many of our tasks but eliminate sysadmins. Not ever.
Admin? We don't need no stinkin' Admin!!!! (Score:2)
Ahh, Windows for Workgroups (Score:2)
They were hyping Windows for Workgroups.
Okay... okay... it isn't quite THAT (Score:5, Insightful)
History repeats itself (Score:2)
Look where we are now. Everyone's a sysadmin, installing operating system patches, and there's nobody with some clue to ask if anything goes wrong.
New Administrator Message: (Score:2)
Have a nice day."
Well that eliminates the most unreliable component (Score:4, Insightful)
Just back from Sun Network (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, they'r enot quite there yet. They've been at it for close to two years now, and it seems that all they have is some IT management solution. Yawn. Not only that, the plan goes three years out before they reached the vision mentioned above. And even then it's Sun hardware only.
Business 2.0 quoted someone as saying that if Sun doesn't make N1 work, they will simply fade away. Well, maybe they'll make it work, but will anyone care. I'm not sure Sun has three years left. With Intel eating at its HW revenue and Linux slurping up the software revenue, and no services arm to speak of. Man, I don't see Sun's future. It's not N1, anyway.
Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
All For The Low, Low Price of.... (Score:3, Funny)
Good for Sysadmins (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not out to eliminate the sysadmin, they're just trying to "do it right", to do the things that many intelligent sysadmins do already. It will eliminate some sysadmin jobs, where departments had too many people because their processes were inefficient, but the good sysadmins will still have jobs.
I've seen some companies running a unix datacenter with 100 machines and 30 unix admins, which is just crazy. Other places, I've seen 1000 machines run by 5 guys, which is how it should be. The guys at the smart places write good management scripts, and know how to scale their management of the systems well. Sun is just trying to encapsulate these things so that even the companies too dumb to do it on their own can now have such benefits.
The joke is on them (Score:5, Funny)
Jump forward to 2025. The remnants of humanity, all previously sysadmins, build a cyborg and send it into the past to kill the co-founders of Sun Microsystems before they can build their self administering systems.
Please Explain. (Score:3, Funny)
Well, well where to begin?
Is this like ghosting [symantec.com] an existing configuration? If so I have never seen a ghost image take weeks.
How do you tell it what you want on the system? Set up an initial system and then copy [symantec.com] it?
Who makes the configuration decisions that are normally made during a manual install?
What software takes weeks to install?
Why did I let this stupid, impractical, fact-lean marketing ploy make me late for dinner?
Nerd! Cooperate. (Score:4, Insightful)
Er...come again? What part about your product is supposed to make me want to install it? The fact you called me a nerd, or the fact that so far all you have is marketing hype and no real product?
I'm not going anywhere for a while, but you may be looking for a new job in the near future. What was your username?
G
Economist troll (Score:4, Insightful)
I know a few so-called-nerds who could kick this so-called-journalist's arse. It's a troll, people; but it's also a troll that has the ear of management wonks who may listen. If you're a small department without an IT manager, it would serve you well to work on educating the decision makers as to what your job entails, your job responsibilities as defined by management and also good system administrator practices, and how you're overworked as it is. Frame it so they don't think that this system (if it works) will save them expensive wages, but it will improve their IT department's customer service and add value to the organization by giving them more time to research and impliment new technologies.
Anyone smell vapor? If it can automatically reconfigure machines for demand, what happens when the demand switches throughout the day (IE email in the morning, pr0n filtering at lunch, and facilities management systems just before punchout)? How long does it take to reconfigure a machine? What if you get a DOS attack aimed to entice this management software to start reconfiguring a bunch of machines? What if it's a DOS attack from inside the firewall?
The system is supposed to save "days" of machine-configuration time, but how often do you configure new servers? If you were deploying a commodity system (could custom systems be automated?), wouldn't you use a system image or other running system as a base?
The Holy Grail of computing? (Score:5, Funny)
"We want
Yeah, yeah.... that's what they said about NT (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, lets clear this up... (Score:4, Insightful)
Firstly, this is not really designed for desktop machines, as I understand. The main focus is servers. You link a whole bunch of servers together, set some sort of global policy rules (eg the web server can have as much CPU on as many machines as it wants), and its up to this smart software to intelligently enforce the policy.
Secondly, presuming the software has a fairly substantial cost per seat, who's going to use it on a set of workstations where you can't even predict whether they're going to be turned on or not. Unless you're running really CPU intensive stuff that can be parallelised really well, then what's the point?
Thirdly, I don't think many sysadmins are going to find themselves out of work due to this. There's going to need to be intelligent thought put into setting up this "global policy" stuff in the first place, and both admin and business will need to cooperate to work it out...
I know! (Score:5, Funny)
Try it with CEOs (Score:4, Funny)
My, such whistling in the dark... (Score:3, Insightful)
Things that were difficult become easy. Live with it. I started as a programmer on an IBM 7094. Fortran II was the in thing, but if you wanted to run a large program you wrote it in FAP or MAP, because computation was expensive, and assembler was faster.
The last assembler I even looked at was for CP/M. and then I was only writing a serial port driver for a terminal that had a second I/O port (for an auxillary printer).
Now I've pretty much dropped C in favor of Python and Ruby (due to company policies, I pretty much missed most of Java).
The jobs change! When I got into the programming profession in 1970 (approx.) I expected the profession to last about 20 years. I consider myself to have been exceptionally fortunate that it's lasted until now. True, it's meant I had to use MSAccess, but outside of that...
And I have done sysadmin work. On a Unix System V Altos box. (I was a pretty crude sysadmin, and I never got any training, but I kept it up, and allowed remote users access to a database that I wrote and maintained. [O, I am the cook, and the captain too, and crew of the Nancy Bell. The bosun tight, and the midshipmite, and the crew of the captains gig.]) I had to wear all the hats on that job. But I did it, and it stayed up.
That was years ago. Now I'm a programmer again. When they decided they needed a DBA, they hired outside. (Good person, but I wasn't pleased.) I think my boss' boss was empire building, and hiring more expensive people made him look more important, but I'll never find out for sure. Still, I didn't loose. And it might be because I'm getting near retirement.
Your lives will change! This is but one of the straws in the wind. Accept the fact, and you can get ready for it. Deny it and you will capsize and drown.
Moore's law is one of the factors here. It is becoming cheaper to use general purpose programs than to write specialized ones that are more efficient. Don't think about shell scripts (though that is where it started). Imagine libraries of shell scripts, with descriptions of what they do. Searchable descriptions. Accessible with an interface similar to Google's. The first versions don't work. The second versions are clumsy. The third versions are limited. The fourth versions... In five or six years, sysadmin won't be a highly skilled job. This has been in progress ever since DEC first wrote the computer installation expert system. This has been in progress ever since the first word processor, or the first spreadsheet. How many secretaries do you see anymore?
So look for where they won't be heading, and follow your star (if you don't like the job, you can't earn enough to make it a good one).
E.g.:
1) I don't have any entreprenurial skills. So I choose the technical path. (Yeah, you can combine them, if you have the right skill set. And the extra skills would have helped me. But that's not who I am. So I picked my career path with that in mind.)
2) Estimate how long the job will last. I estimated 20 years. I got lucky, and it lasted longer, though it sure did morph in ways that I didn't expect.
3) Evaluate how much preperation it will take vs. how long it will last. Again I got lucky. By the time I found out that I wasn't cut out to be a mathematician or a physicist, I only needed a couple of courses to become a programmer (well... Statistician, but that was because that title paid $150 a month better. The job was really programmer.)
4) Start early. I goofed here. I was nearly graduating before I found my mistake. But I got lucky.
5) Keep you eyes open. The world is an unstable place, and programmers (and sysadmins) are some of the people who are destabilizing it (so don't complain). Tech changes are coming faster all the time, so keep your eyes on what's coming down the path.
On point 5: The automated sysadmin won't be here in workable form this year. But don't count on model 1 not showing up. And next year model 2, and perhaps 3. That's only two years to get ready, not a lot of time, but probably enough if you start preparing now. The sysadmin jobs won't really start evaporating until model 4 comes out (the one that really starts removing the skills from the job [you just might, however, look at how Mandrake handles the sysadmin task
Sun summed up in one passing comment on IRC (Score:4, Informative)
"because I had an account on a Sun e10k and I can tell you like clockwork the thing reset every month for a year and then Sun came out and said 'yes, every Sun e10k on the market does this it's bad cache in some form but we don't understand and we suggest installing more a/c. in addition we made all our customers who reported the problem sign an NDA to get support. any questions?'"
Dang! (Score:3, Funny)
Days of SysAdmin numbered? Now you tell me, just after renewed my subscription [sysadminmag.com]!
technology behind Sun's N1 (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=
Before that they picked up Dolphin Interconnect to help them make a 4x (30 Gigabit/sec) InfiniBand Host Channel Adapter.
Here is an article from an EETimes Network site, CommsDesign with some details.
http://www.commsdesign.com/news/tech_beat/OEG2002
It is definitly interesting stuff. Everyone is trying to do Shared I/O and I/O Virtualization; maybe Sun can get it right.
Exploit... (Score:3, Interesting)
It won't fix itself. It's ability to fix itself will be the first thing a Cracker disables.
And so falls another elite (Score:3, Interesting)
Ayn Rand's philosophy isn't so palatable when the only job available in twenty years is washing floors at a McDonald's -- maybe. That job could be automated too.
With jobs being exported overseas, a radical administration gutting unions, job security, medicare, and free schools with such glee, where the hell is anyone supposed to make a living?
Not everyone has an "in" into Harvard or MIT. And most of the top, top management jobs are practically royalty anyway -- for the ultimate example of that, look in the White House. A dumb frat boy who goofed off until he was forty, a National Guard deserter, who ran every company he touched into the ground, who had only six years of public service to his name, got appointed President by his father's friends into his job.
This ain't an idle point. Meritocracy can only go so far when business management, in the name of profit, is dilligently nuking all the jobs they can, and erasing the safety nets for those who can't get hired anymore. The shareholders are happy (until the bubble bursts), but in the end we have an unemployed workforce contrasting with the enormously wealthy executives who canned them.
Where's the software that will get rid of the parasites at the top who pass out the pain? Somehow I doubt that innovative tech will ever see the light of day.
Damnit, sometimes I feel like going communist. With heroes like this, what the hell is the difference?
Re:No surprise here (Score:3, Flamebait)
No, he just thinks they take up too much money which could otherwise be used to buy his overpriced oversold boxes. £25k for a dual 1 Ghz UltraSparc III [sun.com] workstation just so I can compile my C++ at a speed vaguely comparable to my £2k dual Athlon ? And run a bastardised Unix that daren't even acknowledge it's parentage ??
Mod me down, but everything from Sun apart from the colour schemes and the name sucks... god I wish Apollo had been the one to survive those early workstation wars rather than the self-congratulatory Sun. And yes I know they supposedly contributed more source to GNU/Linux than anyone else, but I reckon that's just their badly structured
Ooops, sorry, thought I was on Slashdot for a moment there
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