Sysadmin is a good starting point for Cloud and DevOps

There are a lot of us that have been in the Information Technology industry for a number of years that have worked through industry changes in the past. Heck, you may have started in the industry in the previous century as I did. Your journey may be somewhat like mine where you have had a number of roles for a number of employers. Your background may include a good dose of network administration and systems administration. You may have worked for a VAR or an ISV or now a MSP. Your titles can range from a number of things that sound impressive, but at the core get to systems and network management and deployment. Many of us are not programmers by training or practice and don’t really have an interest in being a full-time software engineer. That being said, we routinely use logic in our jobs as well as scripting to get much done due to our teams being as oversubscribed as our SANS and hypervisors. As the industry changes, the question periodically arises as to the relative need for systems administrators. They are needed and quite relevant.

That being said, the historical role of the system administrator as it was in the Naughts is as obsolete as the enterprise PC technician. If you cut your teeth on managing Windows 2003 R2, Solaris 8, AIX 5.X or RHEL 5 and HP printers attached via JetDirect boxes to the network and think you can keep basically doing that kind of systems administration, you will likely be a casualty of a RIF. Cloud is here to stay, and it is not a fad. The same is true of DevOps tools and methodologies. Containerization is very much part of the norm now and so is automation. Thinking that these things are a fad that you can ignore is delusional.

Actually, these changes are a great opportunity to grow your skill set while leveraging your background. For you, these changes are a way to evolve your career and contribute. We seasoned I.T. veterans, who have worked with SANS, networking, virtualization and operational systems administration in the enterprise, have a wealth of context to learn cloud, containerization, and orchestration. Relating cloud-based block stores back to Raw Device Mappings and LUNs is a no brainer. Recognizing Azure Files or AWS FSx are cloud analogs for a NetApp NFS or CIFS share is not a big leap.

Having a background working with VLANs, routing, multi-homed systems and iptables will be at an advantage when learning about security groups, nacls and Web Application Firewall, along with a host of other services and architectural components. Even if you are not moving fully cloud and are going hybrid, then the tools and concepts have relevance. You may be doing only private cloud and self-hosting. Embracing configuration management tools like Ansible or Infrastructure as Code tools, like terraform, will be relevant and part of the landscape. Containerization is both in house and in the public cloud. If your background has both Linux and virtualization, you are in a good place to start learning microservices, containers and Kubernetes. Use your previous scripting experience to get even deeper into Python and PowerShell for more automation.

We seasoned sysadmins are ideal candidates to transition to cloud and DevOps roles. Yes, there is a lot to learn and practice. We have to put in the work. Our context and experience positions us to get up to speed and contribute more quickly and productively. These technologies and methodologies cross multiple disciplines and areas of knowledge. They are amalgamation roles that cover a breadth of skills that take years to develop proficiency in. You have a great foundation to build them on. Transitioning to these roles will take a few years but it will be worthwhile as you enjoy more career opportunity and growth through this decade. You did not glean your current body of knowledge and expertise in a single bootcamp, and this next chapter will be no different. You do have the opportunity to still get your geek on, challenge yourself, and be a mentor to others that lack your context.