Modern System Administration

Early system administration required in-depth knowledge of a variety of services on individual systems. Now, the job is increasingly complex and different from one company to the next with an ever-growing list of technologies and third-party services to integrate. How does any one individual stay relevant in systems and services? This practical guide helps anyone in operations – sysadmins, automation engineers, IT professionals, and site reliability engineers – understand the essential concepts of the role today.

Collaboration, automation, and the evolution of systems change the fundamentals of operations work. No matter where you are in your journey, this book provides you the information to craft your path to advancing essential system administration skills. Author Jennifer Davis provides examples of modern practices and tools with recommended materials to advance your skills.

Topics include:

• Development and testing: Version control, fundamentals of virtualization and containers, testing, and architecture review
• Deploying and configuring services: Infrastructure management, networks, security, storage, serverless, and release management
• Scaling administration: Monitoring and observability, capacity planning, log management and analysis, and security and compliance

Table of Contents

Part I. Reasoning About Systems

Chapter 1. Patterns and Interconnections

Chapter 2. Computing Environments

Chapter 3. Storage

Chapter 4. Network

Part II. Practices

Chapter 5. Sysadmin Toolkit

Chapter 6. Version Control

Chapter 7. Testing

Chapter 8. Infrastructure Security

Chapter 9. Documentation

Chapter 10. Presentations

Part Ill. Assembling the System

Chapter 11. Scripting Infrastructure

Chapter 12. Managing Your Infrastructure

Chapter 13. Securing Your Infrastructure

Part IV. Monitoring the System

Chapter 14. Monitoring Theory

Chapter 15. Compute and Software Monitoring in Practice

Chapter 16. Managing Monitoring Data

Chapter 17. Monitor Your Work

Part V. Scaling the System

Chapter 18. Capacity Management

Chapter 19. Developing On-Call Resilience

Chapter 20. Managing Incidents

Chapter 21 . Leading Sustainable Teams

Who Should Read This Book?

I wrote this book for all the experienced system administrators, IT professionals, support engineers, and other operation engineers looking for a map to understand the landscape of contemporary operation technologies and practices.

This book may also be helpful to developers, testers, and anyone who wants to level up their operations skills. I recognize that sometimes a team is made up of folks who only sometimes do “ops stuff” but have a need to understand the systems more clearly to be effective in their roles.

I’ve tried to focus on the principles and practices that support all modern operations work. Still, I recognize that my experiences (lots of Unix-flavored administration, primarily with distributed systems) have shaped my perspectives. All of this book is relevant to most sysadmins, but every organization has different needs that will drive the activities of those sysadmin teams. For example, suppose your activities are primarily managing site-based infrastructure (i.e., WiFi hotspots, printers, and phones). In that case, the material in Part III will not be as relevant.

What This Book Is Not

This book is not a “how-to” reference for tools, software applications, or specific operating systems, as there are many quality reference materials to dig into those particular topics. (However, where relevant, I will point out some recommended materials to level up your skills.) If you are looking for the instruction manual for a specific tool that gives you a step-by-step guide to administering a system, this isn’t that book. There are plenty of operating system and application-specific books and resources out there.

Scope of This Book

As system administrators, our time focuses on the system level and how the whole works holistically (for whatever slice of systems we are responsible for). No one can tell you how to do everything, but I can guide you to practices and tools that will help you engage with the craft, boost your confidence, and connect with others who are on the same journey.

About the Author

Jennifer Davis is an experienced operations engineer, international speaker, and author. Her books include Modern System Administration, Effective DevOps, and Collaborating in DevOps Culture. Jennifer has worked with a variety of companies, from startups to large enterprises, improving operability practices and encouraging sustainable work.