Decoding the SysAdmin: Shedding Light on the Role of IT MVPs

The age-old question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” has long been answered with occupations such as: firefighter, ballerina, doctor, or princess. Why, you may wonder, does systems administrator rarely make the cut? As a critical member of the organization they support, surely a more rewarding and interesting career than SysAdmin can’t possibly exist!

While we know how exciting, versatile, and important our jobs truly are, do the people closest to us understand? When you get a text message from your remote monitoring system during a soccer game or dance recital, what do you tell your kids? If you break from analyzing system logs to enjoy a family dinner, how do you explain that a log is more than a chopped up tree trunk? Even with all your tireless explaining, how many times have you heard a version of this phrase: “My mom does something with computers…I think”?

In honor of Systems Administrator Day this year, we want to know what your family thinks you do 24/7, rain or shine, day or night. Whether it’s “Stuff on a computer,” “Emails their friends,” “Fixes problems,” or “Uhh…technology?”, let us know by July 18, and we’ll give you 250 THWACK points—and, if necessary, moral support from your fellow techies who do understand that you have the coolest job in the world.

Parents
  • Last weekend I was surprised with an after-hours outage call from one of my 7x24 Service Centers.  I say "surprised" because the site's LAN and WAN are fully redundant.  Yet half of the users' Citrix Thin Clients and VoIP phones were down.

    After discovering a hung secondary CPU / switch fabric in one of this site's dual chassis switches, and quickly remedying it by removing it, I asked the local staff to confirm everything was back up and running OK.  They all logged in successfully (where previously their TC's were hung), and their phones were all working.  All was good!

    Then I asked if anyone was interested in seeing the network room and hearing a basic analogy of what happened.  The ladies were TICKLED to get away from their cubes for a few minutes, and they came with me to the network room in split shifts and watched and listened and marveled at the network connections in there.

    I told them "Imagine there are two sisters sharing the work of moving your data, carrying it down the Information Highway together.  (The "sisters" were the two supervisor blades within a 384-port chassis switch, the "carrying it together" was the two uplinks ports in a port-channel--one connection from each supervisor going to the upstream L3 switch).  Sister #1 has the main responsibility, but Sister #2 is just as strong and as smart, and she helps carry the load.  They hold hands with each other as they walk down the road, doing the work together.

    Well, Sister #2 accidentally slipped off the road and landed in deep quick sand.  Sister #1 didn't let go of her hand, even though it was the right thing to do to save herself.  So, the work of carrying your data down the Info Highway stopped as Sister #2 dragged Sister #1 down into the quick sand, too."

    The workers nodded and smiled and said they could understood that analogy.  They asked me how I fixed it so quickly.  I continued:

    "I released the hand-holding they had going between them; Sister #1 wouldn't let go of her expired Sister's hand until I showed her Sister #2 was unconscious.  (I pulled the hung standby supervisor blade out, ensuring its port in the port-channel to the upstream L3 switch could no longer cause problems, and the "good" supervisor stopped trying to peer with the hung supervisor.)  Once she released her grip, Sister #1 quickly floated back up above the quicksand and started moving your data on down the Info Highway.  (The L3 switch stopped trying to send port-channel traffic with the chassis that had a failed supervisor module in it.)   I'm taking Sister #2 to the hospital; she should be back in a couple of days, as good as new."  (I sent the failed supervisor back to Cisco via RMA for a replacement blade.)

    I could see more nods of enlightenment.  They were buzzing and laughing, and they encouraged me to bring in the next small group of their coworkers (who were watching the phones while this group was with me in the network room) so THEY could hear The Story Of The Two Sisters.

    Sometimes life doesn't have to be as complicated as we I.T. types choose.  Maybe all it takes is a simple story that an audience might enjoy, if it can represent events that affected users.  I knew my audience was plenty savvy; I could have used the technical jargon and they'd have gotten the idea.  But where's the fun in that?

    Building a story like this is part of the enjoyment I get from doing my job, representing I.T. and my Network team.  It's good P.R.  It only takes a minute, and life is made more kind and understandable for everyone.

Comment
  • Last weekend I was surprised with an after-hours outage call from one of my 7x24 Service Centers.  I say "surprised" because the site's LAN and WAN are fully redundant.  Yet half of the users' Citrix Thin Clients and VoIP phones were down.

    After discovering a hung secondary CPU / switch fabric in one of this site's dual chassis switches, and quickly remedying it by removing it, I asked the local staff to confirm everything was back up and running OK.  They all logged in successfully (where previously their TC's were hung), and their phones were all working.  All was good!

    Then I asked if anyone was interested in seeing the network room and hearing a basic analogy of what happened.  The ladies were TICKLED to get away from their cubes for a few minutes, and they came with me to the network room in split shifts and watched and listened and marveled at the network connections in there.

    I told them "Imagine there are two sisters sharing the work of moving your data, carrying it down the Information Highway together.  (The "sisters" were the two supervisor blades within a 384-port chassis switch, the "carrying it together" was the two uplinks ports in a port-channel--one connection from each supervisor going to the upstream L3 switch).  Sister #1 has the main responsibility, but Sister #2 is just as strong and as smart, and she helps carry the load.  They hold hands with each other as they walk down the road, doing the work together.

    Well, Sister #2 accidentally slipped off the road and landed in deep quick sand.  Sister #1 didn't let go of her hand, even though it was the right thing to do to save herself.  So, the work of carrying your data down the Info Highway stopped as Sister #2 dragged Sister #1 down into the quick sand, too."

    The workers nodded and smiled and said they could understood that analogy.  They asked me how I fixed it so quickly.  I continued:

    "I released the hand-holding they had going between them; Sister #1 wouldn't let go of her expired Sister's hand until I showed her Sister #2 was unconscious.  (I pulled the hung standby supervisor blade out, ensuring its port in the port-channel to the upstream L3 switch could no longer cause problems, and the "good" supervisor stopped trying to peer with the hung supervisor.)  Once she released her grip, Sister #1 quickly floated back up above the quicksand and started moving your data on down the Info Highway.  (The L3 switch stopped trying to send port-channel traffic with the chassis that had a failed supervisor module in it.)   I'm taking Sister #2 to the hospital; she should be back in a couple of days, as good as new."  (I sent the failed supervisor back to Cisco via RMA for a replacement blade.)

    I could see more nods of enlightenment.  They were buzzing and laughing, and they encouraged me to bring in the next small group of their coworkers (who were watching the phones while this group was with me in the network room) so THEY could hear The Story Of The Two Sisters.

    Sometimes life doesn't have to be as complicated as we I.T. types choose.  Maybe all it takes is a simple story that an audience might enjoy, if it can represent events that affected users.  I knew my audience was plenty savvy; I could have used the technical jargon and they'd have gotten the idea.  But where's the fun in that?

    Building a story like this is part of the enjoyment I get from doing my job, representing I.T. and my Network team.  It's good P.R.  It only takes a minute, and life is made more kind and understandable for everyone.

Children
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