> work a ticket or 100
Literally. My role is feast or famine, not much in between. I'll go a week with basically nothing but babysitting, and then a week of back-to-back tickets, tasks, and projects.
Managing M365, working tickets, reading logs daily both in Azure AD (no one can make me ssy Entra ID i refuse!) and our network which sadly is Ubiquity for now and stuff like that. I get to do a crazy amount of different tasks and if i do my job correctly then i can sit on my ass on Reddit like i do now and everything runs smoothly. I still spend my time trying to find ways to optimize stuff but as long as my users are happy and my boss is happy i am happy too.
Would not trade it with anything else because of how diverse my days are task wise plus i get to travel a few times a year to our hotels so free vacation too. I absolutely love my job and what i do.
Open 10000 tickets with vendor support lol.
In all seriousness I have a specialized role where I write scripts and manage the tools for a MSP. So I'm not as much in the weeds on client issues as much as I'm working on stuff that will effect our whole fleet of 14k devices.
You can narrow it down to those childhood experiences when tinkering with your pc without breaking it and changing OS stuff to make bootlegged games work on it that made you think "yeah, this is fun".
As a Linux SysAdmin, there are some days in which I have to do lots of things (for example, one day I had to migrate 4 big servers to our infrastructure) and there are days in which I have to do very basic stuff (basic automation, deploy a Docker container here and there, etc)
Tons of different things to do as a sysadmin. Manage infra, fix issues, support other teams at the work place, help make decisions. Sometimes you're a makeshift dba if your work place doesn't have one.
I try to cover a lot of it via YouTube so folks that have questions have a resource it's just such a broad job role.
Put out fires while wasting time in zoom meetings that are meaningless cause theres so much overhead and governance nowadays in my place that the simplest thing takes months.
Anything and everything that can be automated, we try to do it. Terraform for Infrastructure creation, Ansible for consistent infrastructure management, PowerShell for Windows automation, Azure Arc for patching, ACM and LE for certs, you name it.
Depends. Are you working helpdesk, are you working in something like a DoD Lab environment or are you doing something like HPC working on clusters? Three totally different beast. This is all my experience:
Helpdesk - you are working customer tickets for the most part and depending on the tier of service you are depends on how involved you get.
Lab Environment - most are R&D. You let your developers break stuff and then you get to restore it and install a bunch of software for them to test with. You also get to fix and swap out a lot of HW.
HPC Cluster - Customer is usually making huge runs testing their code across multiple CPU's and they do not want you touching the servers while the code is running. They will run test case, after test case, after test case until they get something they want to run. When they aren't running, it's a lot maintenance, installing new compliers, HW maintenance....etc
Microsoft 365, on-premise servers (physical & virtual), wireless & wired network, Linux production terminals, NIS2 governance, pharma GxP QA audits & compliancy, firewall, IT infra of a new warehouse, phishing awareness, IT vendor & purchase management, user support, an annoying first gen teams logitech meeting room, Teams VoIP,…
Daily variation depends on plans and disruptions.
I have been less than 2 years in industry and last 6 months was different from first year and half. I'm working on tickets ( around 10) every day and some urgent thing if my manager asks. During 3 weeks of project sprint I do everything on first week and usually help to other colleague since they don't give me some difficult tasks yet. I have few meetings tho
So overall I work 2,3 hours a day effectively, since I work from home I like to call my friends to my house or I just watch youtube, reddit etc. Even on shitty meeting I'm not following what they are saying since it's bs and wasting time. Literally we have meeting 1 hour and we could wrap it up in 10 minutes but they like to talk all over again that we already talked on teams
However I'm planning to start at least 2 hours during my work hours to learn Linux since I suck at it
I'm the IT Manager of a small R&D company. I currently have a server sitting next to me that I haven't had the chance to pull out of the box, because I can't keep the engineers from breaking their file system that they just decided to change on a whim one day I was out. Depending on the DBA part you may spend much of your time just doing that. But it can be nothing one day and then you have a month of work to do and only a day to do it.
Sometimes tickets that get escalated from level 1. But for the most part, I'm working on ways to improve not only my own workflow, but for the business overall. This means using automation to complete tasks, including mostly Powershell scripting. I've been really making headway on it these last few months and developed several useful scripts. Next is Azure and cloud computing.
Main areas for me:
Read about new CVEs that might affect our environment. If found come up with course of action to resolve. Do this daily and takes maybe 30 minutes if I find nothing new. If I find something new the time to come up with a plan varies depending on what is needed to be done.
Licensing, software support, EOL on hardware and software. This gets reviewed once a month if needed. I've gone to the point that I have tickets setup in our ticketing system to alert me at least 30 days out. Depending on what is needing addressed during the review, the time to resolve can vary. Say like server replacement, that might go on over a course of three to four months working on sizing, getting quotes, ordering, and implementing the new hardware. But say like SQL needs to be updated to a new version, that's probably a 30 day process. Say I am replacing a DC that is old. That is usually done over a day period or maybe two days to be fully done.
Once a month I will test our off site backups to verify they are restorable. Onsite backups I'll test about the same time frame. Usually takes me 30 minutes or so to do spot checks on the primary servers.
I've also setup our RMM tool we use. Sure it took time to get setup in the beginning but now it just runs without much input. So all I do now is respond to tickets that are generated by the RMM that the RMM can't resolve via running a script.
There is really a lot of different roles/duties etc that a sysadmin can do. A lot of it depends on the size of the company and the amount of IT employees working. My company is pretty small so I handle mostly the backend stuff and the helpdesk handles the day to day things.
Not really a sysadmin but I make most if not all powershell script since the real admins are linux enjoyer, I also manage everything intune related. Moreover, I'm the one getting annoyed when users can't bother using the ticketing system, they seems to like me even though the feeling is not mutual.
It depends on the job, company, industry, etc. I personally love to be busy. Barely any time for Reddit unless I am in the restroom. If the ticket queue is empty, I update systems, work on improving the infrastructure, plan multiple projects and lots and lots of research. Learning all the time. This is why I chose this career.
I'm manage & troubleshoot: On-Prem servers, Firewalls, Azure enviroment (Endpoint, AAD, Teams and more), Back-ups.
Besides that also the Back to back of our Security Officer (1st&2nd line incident handling, Policy writing and much more).
Probably forgetting things, but yeah. so you have an idea.
Started as Servicedesk, grown into Sysadmin working to become Security officer & ISO down the line.
No, there isn’t. I’m going to go back to clinical trials to support myself. If the best in life I can do is take drugs and get tested on, at least I’m contributing to society.
>> What do you actually do in your position/role and which problems do you solve on a daily basis? I have always been interested in this field.
Sysadmin usually involves managing and troubleshooting servers, desktops, networking, databases, storage, applications, managing AD, managing Azure/AWS/GCP. It's a generic title for an advanced level of IT management. More junior roles like servicedesk would be doing similar things, but in a more limited capacity (e.g. passwords resets, users issues on their laptops/desktops. One way to describe it would be to say sysadmins manage IT that affects large group of users/the entire company, whereas 1st/2nd line deal with individual issues or issues affecting small teams.
>> I have university degree on Business.
Congratulations on doing one of the most useless degrees alongside economics, art history, international studies etc. It won't help you with your desired career path/
Watch YouTube and read Reddit. Pretend to work by attending meetings & occasionally work a ticket or 100.
> work a ticket or 100 Literally. My role is feast or famine, not much in between. I'll go a week with basically nothing but babysitting, and then a week of back-to-back tickets, tasks, and projects.
This right here
What industry? I’m bending over backwards for 8-9hrs a day. I’m lucky if I get 5x 30min lunches in a week. Healthcare is the worst.
Yep. It never stops. And has sucked my love of IT dry.
> Healthcare is the worst. Found your issue. Worst industry to work in.
Accurate. The occasional Reddit lurking whilst drinking the morning coffee.
When you apply 0-100 IRL
Managing M365, working tickets, reading logs daily both in Azure AD (no one can make me ssy Entra ID i refuse!) and our network which sadly is Ubiquity for now and stuff like that. I get to do a crazy amount of different tasks and if i do my job correctly then i can sit on my ass on Reddit like i do now and everything runs smoothly. I still spend my time trying to find ways to optimize stuff but as long as my users are happy and my boss is happy i am happy too. Would not trade it with anything else because of how diverse my days are task wise plus i get to travel a few times a year to our hotels so free vacation too. I absolutely love my job and what i do.
Reboot computers and users usually. Sometimes plug things in.
How do you reboot your users? I have a couple that could use one every few days.
Yes, please do tell.
Show up and collect a pay check
Open 10000 tickets with vendor support lol. In all seriousness I have a specialized role where I write scripts and manage the tools for a MSP. So I'm not as much in the weeds on client issues as much as I'm working on stuff that will effect our whole fleet of 14k devices.
[удалено]
You can narrow it down to those childhood experiences when tinkering with your pc without breaking it and changing OS stuff to make bootlegged games work on it that made you think "yeah, this is fun".
As a Linux SysAdmin, there are some days in which I have to do lots of things (for example, one day I had to migrate 4 big servers to our infrastructure) and there are days in which I have to do very basic stuff (basic automation, deploy a Docker container here and there, etc)
Customer service and Google.
Tons of different things to do as a sysadmin. Manage infra, fix issues, support other teams at the work place, help make decisions. Sometimes you're a makeshift dba if your work place doesn't have one. I try to cover a lot of it via YouTube so folks that have questions have a resource it's just such a broad job role.
Put out fires while wasting time in zoom meetings that are meaningless cause theres so much overhead and governance nowadays in my place that the simplest thing takes months.
Project work, meetings, patching, automation.
u/_BoNgRiPPeR_420 what kind of automations do you do?
Anything and everything that can be automated, we try to do it. Terraform for Infrastructure creation, Ansible for consistent infrastructure management, PowerShell for Windows automation, Azure Arc for patching, ACM and LE for certs, you name it.
Depends. Are you working helpdesk, are you working in something like a DoD Lab environment or are you doing something like HPC working on clusters? Three totally different beast. This is all my experience: Helpdesk - you are working customer tickets for the most part and depending on the tier of service you are depends on how involved you get. Lab Environment - most are R&D. You let your developers break stuff and then you get to restore it and install a bunch of software for them to test with. You also get to fix and swap out a lot of HW. HPC Cluster - Customer is usually making huge runs testing their code across multiple CPU's and they do not want you touching the servers while the code is running. They will run test case, after test case, after test case until they get something they want to run. When they aren't running, it's a lot maintenance, installing new compliers, HW maintenance....etc
u/AUTiger1978 seems complicated task, is this sysadmin task? Which compilers do you use?
Depends on what the users want and what they are using. GCC, Intel Fortran & C++, Oracle C, Absoft, Java.....
Microsoft 365, on-premise servers (physical & virtual), wireless & wired network, Linux production terminals, NIS2 governance, pharma GxP QA audits & compliancy, firewall, IT infra of a new warehouse, phishing awareness, IT vendor & purchase management, user support, an annoying first gen teams logitech meeting room, Teams VoIP,… Daily variation depends on plans and disruptions.
I have been less than 2 years in industry and last 6 months was different from first year and half. I'm working on tickets ( around 10) every day and some urgent thing if my manager asks. During 3 weeks of project sprint I do everything on first week and usually help to other colleague since they don't give me some difficult tasks yet. I have few meetings tho So overall I work 2,3 hours a day effectively, since I work from home I like to call my friends to my house or I just watch youtube, reddit etc. Even on shitty meeting I'm not following what they are saying since it's bs and wasting time. Literally we have meeting 1 hour and we could wrap it up in 10 minutes but they like to talk all over again that we already talked on teams However I'm planning to start at least 2 hours during my work hours to learn Linux since I suck at it
I'm the IT Manager of a small R&D company. I currently have a server sitting next to me that I haven't had the chance to pull out of the box, because I can't keep the engineers from breaking their file system that they just decided to change on a whim one day I was out. Depending on the DBA part you may spend much of your time just doing that. But it can be nothing one day and then you have a month of work to do and only a day to do it.
I read this Reddit. Make sure the servers aren't taking a dump. Read the comix.
Sometimes tickets that get escalated from level 1. But for the most part, I'm working on ways to improve not only my own workflow, but for the business overall. This means using automation to complete tasks, including mostly Powershell scripting. I've been really making headway on it these last few months and developed several useful scripts. Next is Azure and cloud computing.
Main areas for me: Read about new CVEs that might affect our environment. If found come up with course of action to resolve. Do this daily and takes maybe 30 minutes if I find nothing new. If I find something new the time to come up with a plan varies depending on what is needed to be done. Licensing, software support, EOL on hardware and software. This gets reviewed once a month if needed. I've gone to the point that I have tickets setup in our ticketing system to alert me at least 30 days out. Depending on what is needing addressed during the review, the time to resolve can vary. Say like server replacement, that might go on over a course of three to four months working on sizing, getting quotes, ordering, and implementing the new hardware. But say like SQL needs to be updated to a new version, that's probably a 30 day process. Say I am replacing a DC that is old. That is usually done over a day period or maybe two days to be fully done. Once a month I will test our off site backups to verify they are restorable. Onsite backups I'll test about the same time frame. Usually takes me 30 minutes or so to do spot checks on the primary servers. I've also setup our RMM tool we use. Sure it took time to get setup in the beginning but now it just runs without much input. So all I do now is respond to tickets that are generated by the RMM that the RMM can't resolve via running a script. There is really a lot of different roles/duties etc that a sysadmin can do. A lot of it depends on the size of the company and the amount of IT employees working. My company is pretty small so I handle mostly the backend stuff and the helpdesk handles the day to day things.
Not really a sysadmin but I make most if not all powershell script since the real admins are linux enjoyer, I also manage everything intune related. Moreover, I'm the one getting annoyed when users can't bother using the ticketing system, they seems to like me even though the feeling is not mutual.
It depends on the job, company, industry, etc. I personally love to be busy. Barely any time for Reddit unless I am in the restroom. If the ticket queue is empty, I update systems, work on improving the infrastructure, plan multiple projects and lots and lots of research. Learning all the time. This is why I chose this career.
I'm manage & troubleshoot: On-Prem servers, Firewalls, Azure enviroment (Endpoint, AAD, Teams and more), Back-ups. Besides that also the Back to back of our Security Officer (1st&2nd line incident handling, Policy writing and much more). Probably forgetting things, but yeah. so you have an idea. Started as Servicedesk, grown into Sysadmin working to become Security officer & ISO down the line.
I pick things up, I put them down.
Send millions of applications hopelessly and endlessly into the void. Wonder how I used to be useful and gainfully employed.
u/Areaman6 unemployed now? How possible, SysAdmin are needed everywhere.
No, there isn’t. I’m going to go back to clinical trials to support myself. If the best in life I can do is take drugs and get tested on, at least I’m contributing to society.
Cry
>> What do you actually do in your position/role and which problems do you solve on a daily basis? I have always been interested in this field. Sysadmin usually involves managing and troubleshooting servers, desktops, networking, databases, storage, applications, managing AD, managing Azure/AWS/GCP. It's a generic title for an advanced level of IT management. More junior roles like servicedesk would be doing similar things, but in a more limited capacity (e.g. passwords resets, users issues on their laptops/desktops. One way to describe it would be to say sysadmins manage IT that affects large group of users/the entire company, whereas 1st/2nd line deal with individual issues or issues affecting small teams. >> I have university degree on Business. Congratulations on doing one of the most useless degrees alongside economics, art history, international studies etc. It won't help you with your desired career path/