Any tips for a new beginning Systems Administrator?
Posted by Jonny_Boy_808@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 77 comments
I’m about to start my job this next month. Wondering if anyone had some helpful advice about making my life easier as a Sys Admin, job tips, or general life tips regarding this career. For those curious, the job description is posted below. I’m coming from a Helpdesk job that touches a little on most of these topics below but obviously not as in-depth as a System Admin. I will be shadowing the current SysAdmin for a few weeks before he switches roles to our Cyber Security Analyst.
Job Responsibilities:
- 4+ years of experience administrating Hyper-V/ESXi, Windows Server and disaster recovery.
· Experience with fast paced and dynamic Active Directory and group policy changes.
· 4+ years of experience in helpdesk support of 100 or more Windows workstations and laptops.
· 4+ years of experience with Microsoft Entra ID and Office 365 administration.
· 2+ years of experience working on DNS and DHCP
· Experience with FortiGate firewalls and knowledge with VLANs is a plus
CptBronzeBalls@reddit
Find a healthy outlet for stress. Don’t drink for that purpose, like many of us have.
wight98@reddit
I drink a glass or two of bourbon as soon as I come home. And been through 3 bottles in a month, any tips to slow it down or stop ?
nextlevelsolution@reddit
Try establishing a consistent workout routine. My preference is morning weightlifting before work. The drive to continue progressing and gain muscle outweighs the temporary relief of drinking. Alcohol is terrible for you and negatively impacts fitness progress as well as the rest of your health.
wight98@reddit
True. I'll try hiking in summer for a change
Horror-Engineering45@reddit
As someone who battled that myself I would say my assistance was when I had a wake up call from family and friends. Almost a handle every couple days myself when battling it. Best advice I can give you is just know if you feel like it’s a problem or truly want to slow it down do it. It is not worth alienation, not worth your health and not worth the consequences of impaired judgement. I do hope this helps inspire your idea to slow down and relate to someone who’s been there.
wight98@reddit
Did help thanks
photo_master13@reddit
Start smoking weed
One_Stranger7794@reddit
I know this is not the most optimal solution, but it does work, and is definitely a good way to downshift.
I wasn't planning on talking about this haha, but if it helps anyone I was doing a glass or three of whiskey/ 3 beers plus every night.
I switched to smoking a .5 gram joint of an indica (chill out/sleepy time) instead, which was much cheaper, I slept better, and it killed the drinking for me.
From there I switched it to a .5 gram joint of CBD instead of THC cannabis (the relaxation effect, but without the cannabis intoxication).
From there, I've been finding myself not wanting anything after work anymore. I'll still pull out the CBD from time to time, but I don't 'need' anything anymore to feel like I'm 'home' after work
Lanko@reddit
I'm in this post and I don't like it!
Marcus_Aurelius_161A@reddit
Find an exercise that works for you and get consistent with it. Local running groups are the best as they provide both exercise and a social space.
Xmuzlab@reddit
Join a squash club.
artekau@reddit
Measure twice before you cut (with anything that is including software changes)
Dont do workarounds instead of full fixes, they will eventually come and bite you in the ass
Have a reversal plan for any major changes/updates
Good Luck!
Lonely_Rip_131@reddit
Find a note taking app like journee. Log what you do and how you do it daily. Create an alias or program to quickly search your notebook for things you ran across in the past. Be as detailed as possible in the beginning. Overtime you will be less detailed but this notebook will be your backup "brain" for all things related to your job. This will be crucial allowing you to "memorize" everything. Over time you will rely less on it for the common tasks but it will always be valuable for those unique situations. ALso ... Homelab... Have fun with it. In some ways my homelab is my personal dev environment for new implementations.
Recalcitrant-wino@reddit
Flee.
giovannimyles@reddit
Please don’t be afraid of your own shadow after you make a mistake. You will make a mistake, and it’s fine. Own the mistake and just work to resolve it. Learn from it. Don’t worry about trying to learn everything IT. Learn exactly what your job requires of you and nothing more. Master the job, then automate what you can. Then if you want to learn more outside of what your job does great. Lastly, don’t gatekeep information. Document repeatable processes. Share what you know with your colleagues so you can take unbothered vacations.
4TheLoveOfFreezerZa@reddit
Wow, this, so much. A lot of great advice right here!
ludlology@reddit
Hmmm....
A) You will make mistakes. When you do, be honest about them, especially if talking to a senior technical person. If you try to lie to a senior engineer, it will make them respect you less, distrust you in the future, and also delay resolution of the problem.
B) To make less mistakes, test everything that might possibly have an adverse effect, especially once you start getting comfortable enough to do things without having to look up documentation or ask how. That's when you're in the most danger of overlooking something simple you already know how to do.
C) Don't be afraid to ask a senior for help, or to sanity check something. They will always be glad you asked rather than cowboying something and ruining their day. However, google first. Do not use your senior as human google or they will curse your name.
D) When you do ask a senior for help, write down the answer somewhere. Asking a question is always okay, but asking the same question multiple times becomes logarithmically more annoying each time.
E) If you need to escalate something, include good handoff of what the issue is, what error messages happen and why, what you did to troubleshoot the issue, and what you already tried. Seniors don't mind escalations, but they *hate* escalations that require mining a bunch of information from you to be able to help you.
F) Test your backups regularly, especially if you're sure they work fine because somebody else said so.
G) Aside from spam/newsletters/marketing crap, never delete any email. Keep every communication between you and another person. You never know when you'll need to CYA on something.
H) Speaking of CYA, after every verbal conversation with a manager or user during which a decision was made or permission was granted, or you got any kind of "yes or no" type answer to a question, email that person with a recap. "To recap our discussion earlier, we agreed that A, B, and C will be done in that order, and that you have approved X but declined to proceed with Y." This serves as your CYA a month later when the manager says they never told you to do/not do something.
I) Whenever possible, batch your meetings at the beginning or end of the day. Block out the rest of your calendar with actual work. Otherwise, you will never have more than little chunks of useless time between meetings, and your work requires multiple uninterrupted consecutive hours to accomplish anything useful.
J) Only check email at the beginning and end of the day, with maybe a third time right after lunch. If you check email constantly throughout the day, you will constantly be interrupting your deep work sessions with micro-interruptions. This also results in a fucked up dopamine addiction that will result in you constantly checking email to feel like you're accomplishing something, while serving as a way to avoid hard tasks.
K) Turn off your popup notifications and sounds for Outlook, Teams, and any other messaging applications. See J for why.
L) Speaking of messaging, when you need help with something, don't message someone with "hello" or "do you have a minute" or "can I ask a question". Send a fully formed request the first time, like "Hey jim, i have a question about quickbooks crashing on susan's machine in ticket #12345. she gets this error message whenever she opens the company file. I've already checked reddit, google, and the intuit KB, plus rebooted her PC and none of those helped. Nobody else in the accounting department is having the issue, so it's just her on her machine and the problem started on Monday. Any thoughts?" Your seniors will *love you* if you do this.
M) Do not ever do any technical work for anyone without having a ticket for the work. Also, new tickets do not go to the head of the line unless they are of a higher priority due to the severity of the issue or a VIP user. People are lazy and will follow the path of least resistance to get their issue resolved. If people learn that they can interrupt you in person or with an email or a call or a DM and get their issue resolved right away, a few things happen. One, they will always go to you instead of following the process, which means you'll get interrupted constantly. Second, you have no paper trail if something goes wrong. You can't CYA, the rest of your team can't see the history of an issue if you're OOO, you can't show data for how busy you are, and a bunch of other things. Don't do this. You will get walkups and emails and calls and DMs. When that happens, ask the user to make a ticket, then respond to the work. If it's a VIP-type who you can't push back on, reply to the VIP while CCing your ticketing system.
ludlology@reddit
Continued:
N) When you are working a ticket, always put it in to some kind of "In Progress" status. This probably emails the user to let them know it's being worked on, but it also lets anybody on your team who's looking at the board know that an issue is being worked on so they don't double up, or ask you about it. Saves everybody time and blood pressure.
O) When you are done working on a ticket, take it out of the "In Progress" status for the same reasons.
P) Don't avoid stuff that scares you, especially when it's little shit like setting up a brand of printer you've never worked with before. At your level, pretty much every brand of a device type is 90% the same even if you've never worked with that brand before. You will figure stuff out faster than you think, documentation exists, and google exists. This is how you grow and become a trusted resource for your seniors.
Q) Document everything you do in tickets. Document everything you install/create/remove in whatever your documentation system is. If you find a mistake in somebody else's documentation that can be corrected quickly like a typo, incorrect IP, folder path that's wrong or whatever, just fix it in the moment.
R) Any time you ever make any change that could possibly affect a VIP, critical system, or more than one person, tell your team. Hopefully y'all have a dedicated Teams channel or something for this but if not, just say "hey I'm rebooting the upstairs AP" in your group chat.
S) Always ask a user if they've tried rebooting their device before you spend a bunch of time troubleshooting whatever the problem is. If they tell you they have, verify it anyway with an uptime check like "net stats workstation" in a command prompt. Users lie, don't want to feel silly, etc.
T) Fridays are read-only. Major holiday weeks are read-only. Exceptions for resolving simple one-off issues or critical problems. Do not deploy new things, do not decide to go catch up on firmware updates and patches because things are slow. Don't reboot that weird server you've been meaning to for three months. You'll regret it and your team will curse your name.
U) When you or someone else is already working on a big change or major system, do not make changes to other systems unless told to by your senior. Otherwise, when something weird happens later, it will make determining the root cause much harder.
V) Be a sponge. When a senior engineer is working on something that you think is cool or will advance your career or that you need to know about, ask to shadow or help or be a gofer. This is how you grow. Project-based work is an entirely different type of expertise than just reactive troubleshooting, and you must have this knowledge if you ever want to be a senior yourself.
W) Certifications are less important than you think. Practical experience is more important than you think.
X) You should probably change jobs every 2-3 years unless you know you're in a unicorn situation or still have a ton to learn. Salary and growth both tend to plateau hard around this timeframe and it's very easy to find yourself being 37 years old making ten-years-ago-money and only having the experience of working in one company doing things one way. It's much harder to get out of that rut than to enter it.
Y) Unless you are on call or specifically working after hours or over the weekend for a project type thing, do not respond to emails, answer work calls (other than from your boss), or even look at Teams. Not only will this result in people expecting that from you going forward, it's incredibly toxic to your mental health.
Z) Lastly, and this is a hard one to learn, but try not to take shit personally. You will encounter abusive, rude, demanding, entitled people. Be cordial but don't tolerate it. If you don't report to that person, tell your manager and let them handle it. As soon as a user starts to cuss at you, politely disengage and go straight to your manager. You will also have bad managers who do these things. If going to *that* person's boss doesn't help, you have to change jobs. You can't warm the earth with your body by laying on the ground in winter, and you can't make a shitty boss respect you by sacrificing yourself ever-harder. Just leave. Conversely, when you receive constructive criticism or feedback from someone, take it to heart and do better. It's not an attack. Take a few hours or a day to process and let your pride settle down, then do work to fix whatever needs fixing. This is how you grow.
ludlology@reddit
dfdfgsdfgdfg
fatlumpsbaby@reddit
don't make changes to production on a friday and definitely not before a long weekend. also, never assume that a small change doesn't have the potential to cause a big problem.
TalkingToes@reddit
Visit this to confirm: https://isitreadonlyfriday.com/
fatlumpsbaby@reddit
lol i like it
Lanko@reddit
I mean, yes and no.
Sometimes Friday is the best time to make those changes, assuming you do so with the understanding you might be working on Saturday. Sometimes you want that buffer zone to puzzle out what broke before the staff are back at their desks.
Definitely don't make changes before jumping on a flight for the long weekend though.
TheDawiWhisperer@reddit
read only friday is a myth perpetuated by people that don't live in the real world.
like you said, sometimes Friday is the best day. sometimes i want to make a change on a Friday so if i break it i can fix it at my leisure when no one is working and i don't have the CTO up my arse on a Monday afternoon trying to get the prod SQL box back up.
fatlumpsbaby@reddit
i'd argue that working in a multi team IT environment, in an industry where causing problems or outages that can affect weekend business is pretty real world.
TheDawiWhisperer@reddit
Which is fine but "because I don't want to disrupt people working on a weekend" isn't why people generally parrot the read only Friday nonsense, is it?
One_Stranger7794@reddit
To piggyback, test everything first.
Make it a priority to set up test systems, clients etc. that you can spin up/access quickly for a test before pushing the change to production.
There's nothing in this job that will ruin your day like a routine update/change killing everything.
Oh, and most of the time the money people will make you fight for anything new, even needed stuff. Get comfortable with making a business case for everything you want, and make sure to push for what you need to make test systems, so you can test before rolling out to prod.
I'm in a 100% production, 0% testing environment now and it's very stressful.
fatlumpsbaby@reddit
i feel for those that don't have resources and a budget to support multiple environments and proper sdlc. a test blowing up in prod will surely make your butt pucker.
Zedilt@reddit
Also if you see a system configured in a fucked up way, ask your colleagues about it before you try to "fix" it.
There might be a very valid reason why it's configured that way.
fatlumpsbaby@reddit
recently stumbled upon one of these. asked around. found out it was that way bc they fucked it when they deployed it and nvr fixed it. i guess that kinda counts as valid lol.
thebetterbeanbureau@reddit
"don't make changes" without verifying you have a back up or plan for undoing those changes if something goes wrong.
ashramrak@reddit
this
bbx1_@reddit
This man sysadmins.
Specific_Extent5482@reddit
Test your configurations.
Test them again by only following your notes verbatim.
Fix your notes.
secret_ninja2@reddit
Always take notes, no matter how good your memory is take notes and document cos if it happens once it will happen again.
Try and live a decent work life balance, if you have to work late do it but try not to make it a regular thing at the end of the day your just a number and if you die tomorrow you'll probably be replaced before your even in the ground
gratefuldogzzz@reddit
I came here to say "take notes"...
DirtyDave67@reddit
Figure out how much money you want to make, find out what jobs offer that pay, how many of them there are expected to be in the next 5 years, start working with that specific goal in mind.
Simmery@reddit
Like others said, take notes. More specifically, document procedures at least to the detail that someone of your skill level would understand and be able to repeat. You will want them in two years when you forgot how to do the thing.
Proof_Opinion295@reddit
To sleep at night without worries, always stick to quality. Do as much as assessments before implementing the changes. Planning - 80% Implementation - 20%. Best of luck.
Volatile_Elixir@reddit
Patience, patience,patience…..allow time for yourself to decompress and reflect every once in a while.
Any-Fly5966@reddit
Don't annoy the other sysadmins.
MickCollins@reddit
Verify all backups immediately because until you do you don't have backups.
Det_23324@reddit
I agree wholeheartedly. If there isn't a team for backups than it definitely falls on the sysadmin.
Hopefully, your predecessor has this under control already and can show you the ropes.
djholland7@reddit
Verify as in make sure they’re taking backups, and then restore a back up. Verify your failovers now and not when it hits the fan.
Horror-Engineering45@reddit
This I cannot agree with more about. Never assume anything is good unless you yourself have tested and can confirm.
TheDawiWhisperer@reddit
always ALWAYS do a get-command before you do a set-command
livevicarious@reddit
Run
TheRealBilly86@reddit
Keep a OneNote with everything you learn. written down It's impossible to remember it all especially if you're maintaining many systems in a smaller shop. Solo sysadmin is different from siloed sysadmin
Read the manual of the products you engineer into your network and maintain then learn how to find information effectively using google and graduate to chat GPT. If you can't figure it out don't be bashful about calling product support and getting an SME on the phone.
Never stop learning and tinkering and don't be afraid to take latest tech at home. Example - growing out of on-prem to cloud or learning how AI works and the hardware that runs the system.
Noc_admin@reddit
Find a community outside of work of people who know the challenges and stress of working in this role that you can talk to and get advice from. Meetup is a good place to start, try and go biweekly.
not_in_my_office@reddit
Learn your Company's infrastructure inside out. Simulate them in your Dev Lab environment. Break things and try different approaches in fixing them. Document everything. It's for your own good.
iamLisppy@reddit
It is not the Month of Lunches edition but good nonetheless: Learn PowerShell Scripting in a Month of Lunches | Pure Storage
Good luck in your new job. When you become an old head, pass down knowledge and stuff. :)
AverageMuggle99@reddit
Documentation - no one will thank you for it, except maybe the next guy. But it’s a good exercise to learn your own systems.
Backups - check they actually work
Keep a note of changes you make, sometimes small changes can affect something you never expect and you might not realise straight away what’s happened.
inarius1984@reddit
I can't tell you how many times two things that are seemingly unrelated ARE IN FACT RELATED. Document any and all changes. No matter how small they may seem to be. 👌🏼
Nyther53@reddit
You want very badly for your coworkers to like you, and you need to take proactive steps about that. You're going to spend most of your time being completely invisible, absent from most human social interaction, and the only time most people will interact with you is when they're in a bad mood.
Thats a recipe for being someone no one cares about when its time for layoffs.
Plus, inevitably you're going to fuck something up. You're gonna break something that inconveniences other people and causes downtime. You want people to be inclined to forgive that, ahead of time.
This is genuinely important for your career. Be someone your coworkers want to keep around.
moventura@reddit
unfortunately when you are hired to come in and make a plan to change from sccm to intune, Windows 10 to windows 11 and move to aad instead of on prem, being liked by coworkers doesn't work so well when most of them here change
One_Stranger7794@reddit
When I'm in a bind like that, I usually do the whole "Yeah I'm with you guys I'm mad too! Stupid Microsoft (or whatever MSP were working with at the time), this is supposed to take 5 minutes!"
Lawyer-in-Law@reddit
Can't agree more mate.
I have full faith that my team is there for me and the coworkers love me. I work hard to gain their trust. It's not natural, you have to go in everyday with the mindset that your work isn't the only thing that will speak for you, you need to have people skills and care for your team and they will try to replicate the same by watching your back. Getting the work done is only half the job, making people around you happy and claiming credit for your work is the other half.
Usual-Dot-3962@reddit
Plan and document your changes and then follow the plan. Be as detailed in your plan as possible, even at the command level. It is Important to have a workable rollback plan. When the plan requires it, meet with stakeholders and go over the plan. Admit you make mistakes and do what is needed to avoid them in the future. Never stop learning. Listen to what others have to say. It is cliche but be a team player. And have fun.
Lanko@reddit
Are you the lone it guy or are you the team.
Map everything immediately. Make sure you know where your servers are. Your printers and any other production essential devices. Both physically and virtually.
What are your subnets? Your password lists. If your the lone it guy then you need to rotate your passwords from the previous IT guy. Make sure you sign into everything at least once. And I mean EVERYTHING. If you have to be calling the previous IT guy because they didn't leave a password for something, you'll want to do that in your first week, not a year down the road.
What are your backup requirements?
xxxxrob@reddit
Strive to be a strong communicator. If you have to deal with a customer (say through a ticket) and you make a promise (such as I’ll have an update for you today) then keep your promise. Even if it is only to tell them that there is no update but you’re still looking into it. That customer service will take you a long way. There is an art form to letting someone know you have caught the ball. Nothing more frustrating from the customer end to feel like they haven’t been heard.
If someone shows you how to do something, take notes or ask them if the process is documented. If it isn’t, document it. Make this a habit and people will warm to you and work effectively with you much more quickly because it shows you’re engaged.
If you have a conference call, turn your camera on if it’s with people you don’t know or haven’t met yet. Putting a face to a name goes a long way to garnering favour with colleagues in other teams.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions but similarly to the notes tip, don’t ask the same question. That quickly annoys your peers. At least it annoys me hah
Get familiar with AI such as ChatGPT or Copilot. I only have very basic actual scripting skills but I have been able to build some really cool stuff that I would’ve never been able to piece together by googling.
Once you get familiar with your processes or day to day tasks start thinking about ways to make them more efficient. Scripts, automations, process reworks. That continual service improvement will make you an asset.
If you have a mentor that is disenfranchised or jaded their attitude can rub off on you if you let your guard down. If you’re being shown something sometimes they have a tendency to show you the quick way (but they actually know the right way). Try to make it clear you’re keen to learn and interested. You might never be able to salvage their attitude to work but you can keep them inside by being perceptive of the things that irritate them (poor ticket quality, painful processes etc) and where you can, try to improve these things for them (or at least not by contributing to them eg include all the information you know they get angry if it’s missing etc).
maxd225@reddit
Document everything, if there’s no change management process make one even if it’s just for you. Always have a mop and a plan on how you will back out of your change and create this mop be specific have instructions on how to do the task and how you’re going to back out.
Did I mention document everything? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to look up how I did something last time. Eventually you’re going to forget how something is setup or how something works and that documentation is going to help you.
When shit breaks and when you eventually break something you’ll be happy you documented things.
Also backups, don’t just make sure they’re there but ensure there’s a disaster recovery plan with a documented procedure how you’re actually going to recover your backup and do test recoveries. There’s plenty of stories out there where things were backed up but they were backed up incorrectly.
If there’s no ticket system; you need one and people need to use it, the ticket system will cover your ass. Flyby assignments will eat your day.
JohnL101669@reddit
ANYTHING you do, do it with Security at the top of the to-do list on the project plan.
DHCPNetworker@reddit
Get really good at Powershell. Understand it beyond "Oh, this cmdlet accepts these switches."
Powershell is the difference between an okay sysadmin and a good sysadmin.
80558055@reddit
When troubleshooting: it is always DNS
gtstick@reddit
Congrats on your new position! -Test your backups -Have a test user account, PC, and Server for troubleshooting and try to replicate an issue. Too many people jump to Google without even knowing whether it's a client machine or user account being the issue. -Document for yourself and the team. Trying to remember everything will setup "gotchas" in the future. -Continue training theres tons of documentation, youtube tutorials, and cheap classes on Udemy. -Find out what vendors or MSPs you have as a resource and what they can assist you with. -Learn good habits of testing and planning and not making changes on the fly. That comes with experience knowing I've done this 3 times now and can fix it in 20mins. -There's alot of things to go over but just learn to love the job and the people you work with. There will be good days and bad days, good luck!
vagueAF_@reddit
CCNA is useless for sysadmins.
darkwyrm42@reddit
You are there to serve people by doing a job, directly or otherwise. Relationships matter more than you might think, and people are a lot more forgiving of your mistakes if they know without a doubt that you have their backs.
AV-Guy1989@reddit
DOCUMENT EVERYTHING
SGG@reddit
So, as general "sysadmin/IT" advice:
There's so many other things in this thread and elsewhere, but my list is already too long.
nmonsey@reddit
When your work is slow, spend a lot of your free time training.
Even if you don't use something now, spending a few hours a week learning a new language or how to use a new tool, may help out in the future.
Xmuzlab@reddit
If it ain't broken don't fix it
LRS_David@reddit
Someone higher than you in the food chain (maybe lower but...) will at some point come to you with what seems like a crazy idea of how things should be changed. As you hear them out you'll hear things like "my neighbor's son's college's room mate says this is what all companies are doing now and we should also". Keep a straight face and be prepared to refute them in in front of others without calling them an idiot.
It WILL happen.
CrossTheRiver@reddit
Take notes, ask questions, don't be afraid to admit when you're wrong. Try to be helpful, ask to tag along with more senior engineers. Show an interest in what is going on.
Also try to be authentic. Be respectful. We are professionals and personally I thinks it's important to show professionalism as much as possible due to how important the systems and data we handle on the regular.
Last bit of advice: imposter syndrome is coming for you hard. If you're like me and this makes you miserable, I've found spending some time skilling up on whatever is bugging me helps a ton.
Also realize you aren't an imposter, you earned this and you very likely will thrive. Oh and make sure you document changes thoroughly. It's actually super important but it can sometimes take months for it to come back to bite you if you didn't.
RefrigeratorGlo412@reddit
Powershell is something that can make your life a lot easier, automation in general. Also Documentation is something I would invest as much time as possible. And check your backups as much as possible.
Then again don't stop learning to stay up to date. But I see that you are on a good track in that domain :).
Patrickrobin@reddit
Congratulations on your new role! Transitioning from a Helpdesk position to a System Administrator is a significant step forward. Develop your skills, and with the right approach, you'll do great.
Nik_Tesla@reddit
I that really is your only job responsibilities, you're gonna have it easy, those are all pretty standard.
So what I would do first is fine out all the other stuff that is secretly your responsibility, but they don't tell you until it has broken.
DEATHbyBOOGABOOGA@reddit
Never be the path to ground