60 lines
2.1 KiB
Markdown
60 lines
2.1 KiB
Markdown
[[!meta title="Sysadmin bootstrap - the beginning"]]
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If you read this blog regulary, you probably know that
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I work as a [[sysadmin|tags/sysadmin]] at the
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[ETH Zürich](http://www.ethz.ch).
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I decided to think about all the services I provide and
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to document them very well, so that anybody else with
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some technical background could redo, what I did.
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## Motivation
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For most jobs I've had, it was always one aim to make myself
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redundant, because this proves that I did a good job.
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Secondly this gives me a good chance to review my infrastructure
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and verify that every services can be brought up again very
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fast and with a minimal amount of time spent from my side.
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## Step one: The console
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Probably the most important device in a sysadmins life is the
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own machine. All the cool tools I've found, scripted or
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documentation boundled together took me years of time.
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Sure, most of the stuff is also mirrored to my brain, but
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definitely not perfect, nor very easy to share with others.
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Thus if I had to restart my job as a sysadmin, the first steps
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I would take, are the following:
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* Get a machine (if it's a notebook, desktop, mobile phone doesn't matter)
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* Setup with an OS
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* Copy existing data to my home folder
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* Setup company specific details
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Now I would be ready to start working. But from my experiences, I would
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add two more things before beginning to work:
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* Setting up regular backup
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* Get a second, mostly identical machine
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I guess the reasons for having a backup is clear for every sysadmin reading
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this. The reason for the second device may not be clear for everybody:
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If my console dies (and hardware does that pretty often), I'm unable to
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work until I setup a new machine. Thus the first security to create in
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my job as a sysadmin, is to ensure **I** can work and resume working
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after a damage as soon as possible.
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## Upcoming posts
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This post is the start of a small series containing all the steps needed
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to the current infrastructure I maintain in the
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[Systems Group](http://www.systems.ethz.ch). Upcoming posts will be both
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tagged with **eth** and **sysadmin**.
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[[!tag eth sysadmin]]
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