10 best sysadmin stories from the trenches

Check out these sysadmin technical how-tos, advice pieces, and horror stories that people in the trenches submitted for 2019.

Posted: December 26, 2019 by Nathan Lager (Sudoer, Red Hat)

2 soldiers in a trench WW1 — Image by Bruce Mewett @ Pixabay

2019 has been a great year here at Enable Sysadmin. Ops folks from around the world submitted technical how-tos, wisdom to pass along to the younger crowd, sysadmin appreciation day pieces, and even a few horror stories about mistakes that lead to seemingly endless self-inflicted torment.

Whether it's about getting away from your desk, avoiding burnout, relieving stress, or even destroying the thing that manages all of your virtual infrastructure with a single typo, we hope you enjoy this list of our top 10 sysadmin culture articles from 2019. We’re looking forward to a sysadmin-filled 2020!

The day the virtual machine manager died

A Sysadmin adventure in using dd to write over an existing KVM host

Why the lone wolf mentality is a sysadmin mistake

Lone wolf sysadmins cause short- and long-term problems in team environments. Here's an example of where things went wrong, and also when things are done right.

Top 5 stress reliefs for sysadmins

Compression is best applied to data, not humans. Here are a few of my favorite ways to distance myself from the pressures of being a sysadmin.

I forgot a bracket, deployed, and learned some great lessons

How a personal work horror story turned into lessons about not just smarter deployment practices, but also how to handle mistakes as a team and organizations.

5 command-line games for sysadmins

If you're living life at your terminal emulator anyway, why not have a little fun while you're there?

Geeking outside the office

How outdoor hobbies help this sysadmin maintain his sanity.

A day in the life of a quality engineering sysadmin

Being a sysadmin for a testing team has some interesting challenges. This is what my day looks like.

On burnout, and getting past it

It's easy to burn out in a high-stress industry like IT. Here's what to watch for, how to get out of it, and most importantly, how to avoid it.

7 tips for avoiding burnout

Burnout can be a huge problem in high-intensity careers like system administration. Here's how to recognize when it's happening to you and others, along with what to do in order to recover and avoid the problem in the future.

Appreciating your sysadmin

System administration is one of those jobs that most never notice until things don't work. Sysadmins work hard to keep our digital lives running. Here's how you can show your appreciation on Sysadmin Appreciation Day.

Topics: Sysadmin culture Year in review

Nathan Lager

Nate is a Technical Account Manager with Red Hat and an experienced sysadmin with 20 years in the industry. He first encountered Linux (Red Hat 5.0) as a teenager, after deciding that software licensing was too expensive for a kid with no income, in the late 90’s. Since then he’s run More about me

10 best sysadmin stories from the trenches

Nathan Lager

Try Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Download it at no charge from the Red Hat Developer program.

10 best sysadmin stories from the trenches

Nathan Lager

Try Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Download it at no charge from the Red Hat Developer program.

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