Chapter 3. Systems Management

Chapter 3. Systems Management
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Table of Contents

3.1. Guiding Principals
3.2. Attachment is the Cause of All Suffering

3.1. Guiding Principals

Decisions should be based on objective goals, such as

Improving performance
Improving reliability (which should also be viewed as part of performance)
Reducing maintenance cost
Making all hardware expendable. What end-users ultimately need is access to the programs that do what they need. If a computer they are using to run those programs becomes inaccessible for any reason, it should be easy for them to use another one. Package managers, discussed in Chapter 6, Software Management, help us achieve this sort of independence. All too often, however, people end up in a panic, unable to get work done, because of a hardware failure. This situation is almost always a symptom of poor systems management.

Apply the KISS principal (Keep It Simple, Stupid) to avoid wasted time and effort on unnecessary complexity.

Unfortunately, many IT professionals are driven by ego or other irrational motives and decisions are based on emotional objectives such as

Using their favorite tool (solutions looking for problems)
Favoring the complex solution to make themselves look smart

Top-notch systems managers aim to make everything easily reproducible. All hardware then becomes expendable, because the functionality it provides can be quickly replicated on another machine. This means automating configurations using shell scripts or other tools, and keeping back-ups of important data. Using proprietary tools that may not be around in the future can be a grave mistake. Make sure your automation and backup tools will be readily available as long as you need them.

It's normal to struggle with something the first time you do it. It's incompetent to struggle with it the second time.

Top systems managers also understand how their systems work in detail, so when something does go wrong, they know exactly what to do and can fix it instantly.

Apply the principles of the engineering life cycle, discussed in ???. Start by throwing out all assumptions about design and implementation of IT solutions, such as which language or operating system will be used. First examine the specification: What does the end-user need to do? Will it be done once, twice, or many times? Then consider ALL viable alternatives from counting on your fingers, to scribbling on paper, to using a supercomputer. Which is the cleanest, simplest, most cost-effective way to enable it?