Any tips for a new beginning Systems Administrator?

Posted by Jonny_Boy_808@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 36 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

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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).

MickCollins@reddit

Verify all backups immediately because until you do you don't have backups.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

CptBronzeBalls@reddit

Find a healthy outlet for stress. Don’t drink for that purpose, like many of us have.

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.

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 ?

photo_master13@reddit

Start smoking weed

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.

Xmuzlab@reddit

Join a squash club.

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:

Leave work at work (literally or figuratively), work hours are for work. Non-work hours are for non-work things. Occasionally checking emails/critical notifications is acceptable, but you should have more than one person receiving those critical "SERVER X IS ON FIRE" warnings. This goes for regular days, weekends, holidays, sick leave, etc.
Documentation is important, make the time for it even if it means you get 1 or 2 less things done every day.
Backups are important.
RAID is not a backup.
If it's critical but they don't want to pay to back it up or provide redundancy then it isn't critical.
A backup does not exist unless you've confirmed you can restore from it within the last X days. X is how many days of work your company is comfortable losing. If X is 0, invest in automated backup checking along with manual backup checking at a good interval.
Security in layers. Firewall, VPN, EDR, conditional access, MFA, Bitlocker/drive encryption, limited admin accounts can only be used to elevate, not login to a regular user session, service accounts/credentials, lock down SharePoint sharing if it's in use, as some good examples.
Documentation is important.
Backups are important.
Where ever possible, start people with the most restrictive permissions possible, and only relax for a good business reason.
Use the same tools/etc that you are expecting everyone else to use. Don't give everyone else a standard setup, then go and use your personal laptop/different software for everything because it works better for you.

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.

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.

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.

ashramrak@reddit

this

bbx1_@reddit

This man sysadmins.

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.

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

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.

DEATHbyBOOGABOOGA@reddit

Never be the path to ground