Como você pode dimensionar suas práticas de administração de sistema para acomodar o crescimento e a mudança?

Having a good knowledge in shell scripting and task scheduling gives you a great advantage, whether you are managing a Linux or Windows machine. For Linux servers, learn Bash, cron and systemd timer. Learn to write locks in your shell scripts to avoid running a script if the previous execution hasn't completed yet.

Automate, Delegate, and Collaborate. Automate what you can for full zero touch. Delegate and/or relinquish controls to end users where you can. This is where you can use partial automation to make a “manual” method less error prone. Collaborate with your teammates and customers/end users to continuously improve.

Scalability refers to a system's ability to handle an increasing workload or user base without a decrease in performance. It is an important consideration for system administrators, as it allows a system to grow and adapt to changing needs over time. Performance refers to the speed, efficiency, and reliability of a system. Good performance is important for ensuring that a system can handle its workload effectively and provide a good user experience. SysAdmins also need to consider both scalability and performance when designing and maintaining systems. This may involve choosing hardware and software that are optimized for the desired level of performance of scalability, implementing, monitoring and tuning systems

I think automation is/has been the future of system administration for the past couple of years now. First of everything it will help improve your systems uptime by getting rid of unnecessary downtimes caused by human errors, which I think is one among the key performance indicators in systems administration. On the flip side, you will also gain an emple time to deal with more critical issues or innovating than having to do the same task over and over again.

Automation: Implement tools for task automation. Infrastructure as Code: Use code for managing and provisioning infrastructure. Monitoring and Alerting: Employ robust monitoring with proactive alerts. Scalable Architecture: Design systems with scalability in mind. Documentation: Maintain comprehensive and updated documentation. Training: Invest in continuous team training and cross-training. Security: Integrate security into all aspects of administration. Flexible Scaling: Plan for both horizontal and vertical scaling. Regular Audits: Conduct audits for configurations and security. Feedback Loop: Establish a feedback loop with end-users for continuous improvement.

Look for a good return on your time when automation tasks are under consideration. If it is worth the effort, by all means pursue the development with alacrity. If the task requires little time and is infrequent, are there more "worthy" tasks that will save you or the team time over the long run? It's not a bad idea to prioritize automation efforts and think about why one task should be automated while another may not have the same priority respective to an automation effort.

I recommend to focus on Infrastructure and even security as Code. While backups and high availability remain important, being able to verify and redeploy infrastructure from a codebase offers a different way to add/update/replace systems and recover from incidents.

The 1st and the most key thing which facilities this is the organizational culture. Having company culture, internal processes, tools, and trained organized teams should be in place to build such a DevOps approach

Steps to adopt a DevOps approach in the cloud Develop knowledge of DevOps Principles: Collaboration: Develop a culture of teamwork between development and operations. Feedback Loop: Create continuous feedback Automating Development and Deployment: • Implement Continuous Integration (CI) tools to automatically build and test code with each update. Infrastructure as Code (IaC): • Treat infrastructure as code using tools like Terraform or Azure Resource Manager templates. • Automate the setup and management of infrastructure to ensure consistency and reliability. Version Control: • Use version control systems such as Git to monitor changes in code and configuration. • Ensure the team has access to the most recent and consistent codebase

DevOps fomenta una cultura de colaboración entre los equipos de desarrollo y operaciones, derribando las barreras tradicionales entre estos departamentos. Esto facilita la comunicación y la colaboración continua a lo largo del ciclo de vida del desarrollo de software.

Understanding where cloud fits for your organization is important. Public cloud may not be a good fit for everyone and while hybrid cloud can sound great, depending on the state of your systems prior to the cloud move, bad systems can become worse with cloud migrations

Understanding cloud environments (and how to protect them) will be very important as our workforce transitions to hybrid and remote work. Cloud can be tricky but also can help automate a lot of onboarding processes

Steps to leverage cloud computing Understanding Cloud Basics: • Grasp the fundamental concepts of cloud computing and the services offered by providers like Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud. • Identifying Cost-Efficient Services: • Explore cloud services that offer cost-efficient pricing models, such as reserved instances, spot instances, or cost-saving plans. Right-sizing Resources: • Optimize resource allocation by selecting the right size for virtual machines, databases, and other cloud resources based on actual usage. Implementing Automation: • Integrate automation tools like Azure Automation, AWS Lambda, or Google Cloud Functions to streamline repetitive tasks and reduce manual effort. Centralized Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Los servicios en la nube permiten escalar recursos de manera rápida y eficiente según las necesidades del usuario. Esto es particularmente útil para manejar picos de carga y cambios en la demanda de recursos.

Automation, evolution, business impact, cost impact (scaling a server based on usage: example Microsoft Advisor), co-align hardware with applications lifetime within contract arrangements.

Prioritize understanding core concepts over chasing every trend in tech. Avoid overload paralysis by starting with simplicity and gradually expanding. Balance is key – deep dive into essentials and best practices while selectively adopting innovations. It is not superficial exposure, ensuring a strong foundation is mandatory for sustained success in system administration.

Technology changes very quickly and if you don't adapt you can get behind. Find your niche whether it is Azure and cloud, O365/M365 Administration or even SharePoint and Teams and focus on understanding the product and stay updated with certifications and news or updates

New skills and technologies are indeed needed but I believe that having a great understanding of core concepts will help you learn anything new out there. Everything is built upon the same protocols and standards we use today. The world “cloud” is thrown around everywhere but its core concept is still a data center “behind the scenes”. Be sure to keep up with new trends and stay relevant in the industry but don’t overlook the importance of understanding basic concepts of IT.

Embracing new skills and technologies is crucial for staying relevant and adaptable in a rapidly evolving landscape. As competition comes and goes and new technologies emerge, dedicating time to learning and mastering the current trends ensures not only staying ahead of the curve, but also by logically adapting, a crucial muscle memory. However, it's not just about that, it's also essential to discern the practical application and relevance of these technologies within the specific system's context. Balancing the acquisition of new skills with a critical evaluation of their potential impact would guarantee you won't drown suddenly when you refuse to learn something new or explore new technologies and their capabilities.

La adquisición de nuevas habilidades es un componente clave del desarrollo profesional continuo. La formación constante te permite crecer en tu carrera y asumir roles más desafiantes.

In scaling system administration practices, seamless collaboration is key. Tools facilitating knowledge exchange, coordinated task management, and real-time communication are invaluable. Transparent updates for stakeholders and a feedback-driven approach further enhance organizational agility. There are tools on the market offering solutions that align with these principles, fostering positive impacts on growth and adaptability. These tools can help create process where non exists.

Good documentation is one of the most underrated tools in the IT field; far too much knowledge winds up silo'd in 'local expert' heads and that worsens over time as tribal-only knowledge becomes greater and greater. Leveraging any platform that can integrate your project management and planning with actual execution and implementation and then finally with formal documentation is invaluable. For example, using Jira and Confluence to plan and outline, then flesh out tasks in Jira with information then flowing back into Confluence from Jira as tasks are completed until finally the working notes and planning are migrated to formalized documentation that can be handily traced back to original designs and be easily searched & referenced

Automate everything you can. This way you are learning new skills and systems, but increasing the reliability of your systems. Once you've begun automation in your solution/systems, you can begin looking into the scale of your systems. Remember that the best solutions are any you don't need to redo each time there is a change.

You and your team need to upskill continuously in order to keep your IT environment secure, up to date, performing at its best standard and save cost. Share with your colleagues what you are working on, read, stay informed and pursue training.

I learned that without a clear and fluid communication between different department’s usually lead to a slowdown in processes that are in the edge of the each team‘s workflow. Whenever you have a project with several people responsible for a different job in it, the disconnection between the actions leads to higher workload and a higher need of project maintenance. This is even more evident when different teams are using different tools to do their work and these tools are not well integrated between each other, causing a lack of knowledge being spread in a uniform and direct way to everyone. Visibility is a main key to optimised processes.

hoy en día es mucho más fácil evaluar y mejorar procesos, con la tecnología disponible. Es muy importante que las empresas puedan adaptarse al cambio.

Getting a clear idea of where you are and where you wanting to be and sets plans to move towards that direction by improving processes and automating workflows are a great place to start.

Evaluating and enhancing processes in system administration is pivotal for sustainable growth and efficiency. By systematically measuring and analyzing outcomes, performance, and results, administrators gain valuable insights into areas needing refinement, identifying gaps, and seizing opportunities for optimization. Utilizing metrics like uptime, response time, error rates, or customer satisfaction establishes benchmarks for evaluation. Implementing methods such as audits, reviews, or surveys offers a comprehensive view, aiding in pinpointing inefficiencies or areas for improvement. Automatic systems and service alerts when something is down help immediately know when there are any issues in a server or pipeline.

Regular introspections, reflections, feedback loops are core parts of Agile methodologies - or any good work - if they're not just empty declarations or an opportunity to pat yourself on the back once a week. Introspections and figuring out how one could improve - are HARD. As they should be. Improving anything entrenched can take a substantial effort - and rarely succeeds without executive support or even substantial cultural changes. That said, regular retrospections can be adopted on an individual level. What did I do today that I could do better tomorrow? How do I plan tomorrow so I can be most productive? If we manage to ask (and try to answer) these questions daily - we're already in good shape.

We each may have our own approach to process evaluation and improvement but there are actually documented methodologies I would suggest you use to complement your modus operandi. For example, The "Lean" approach gives you a great framework for practicing continuous process improvement. You can adopt many of the methods advocated by practicing Lean once you start to understand how to apply it to your particular IT discipline. It will also help you better understand the rewards of understanding where process improvement can benefit not only you, but your user base or your organization. Your focus should primarily be on your user base (customers) first and with time this helps ease your administrative burden.

Working with standard systems and technology that are be able to migrate or upgrade to other solutions Training and collaboration also help us to find best solutions

Ensure to have a lab environment to test new versions, new automations etc. that is as close as possible to the production environment. Hands on experience and the ability to prepare changes to production is crucial to avoid downtime.

One other way is to improve the ICT maturity of the organization. In training users about ICT, you lessen the alarms raised on issues. Many users are empowered to fix the basic ICT problems they face. This lessens on the bulky work usually introduced by users. The Systems administrator should therefore contribute to the training needs planning of an institution, after identifying the ICT training needs in the organization. He/She should also contribute to identifying the appropriate training materials, and also automating the retraining schedules online. In this endeavor, the ICT maturity level of the organization will be raised gradually over time, lessening cost of doing business eventually.

Introduce governance over your system administration practices. Having governance creates a framework of checks and balances of your day to day business as usual activities of system administration. It minimizes risk by enforcing standard operating procedures. If you want to level up your game even more. Create a corporate policy around IT process governance that wraps around system administration. System Administrators would be free to innovative and go fast because governance is there to "hit the breaks" when needed. Allowing you to go fast

Big picture thinking and persistence take the cake in terms of growth and being a positive change catalyst. (I wanted to also add "adaptability" - but cringed at it being too much of a cliche.) The tough part is that it may matter little for job security, depending on company and team culture. Yet for personal development and professional (and hopefully, career) growth, those two could set one for life. I wish you the best of luck.