Facilities management professionals know all about living in the world of unsung heroes—they have long been poster children for the back of house operations. Consequently, they should be more than willing to send a shout out to yet another member of this community—systems administrators! And guess what? As the last Friday in July, this is officially System Administration Appreciation Day. (Did you even know such a day existed before reading this post?)
The SysAdminDay web site gives an in depth and compelling explanation as to why—and HOW—you should be appreciating your SysAdmin today.
Let’s face it, without your friendly neighborhood SysAdmin, you wouldn’t even be able see this page, or read or send email. A system administrator takes care of these systems. Sounds simple, right? Well, not exactly.SysAdmins figure out how to bring storage from one server, processing from another, backups from a third and networking from a fourth computer all together, working seamlessly. For you.
It’s not an easy task. Your sysadmins need to understand in depth computing protocols. They often have to know something about programming, something about hardware, a lot about software — and even more about the people using their system.
A good SysAdmin is able to take the staggering array of technologies, acronyms, protocols, networks, vendors, budgets, limited time, competing products, and threats to the computing network and assemble them all together in a working system. Their job is not only to be the geek in the corner who types all day. What they’re doing is bringing these diverse pieces of technology into order, and fitting them together to fill your needs at work and home; to translate the world of computing into human terms.
So be kind to your SysAdmin today…all day…and maybe even into the weekend if you can help it. Think about all of the emergency hours they have spent trouble shooting network failures, defragmenting hard drives, and even fixing your personal computers just because you ask them to do you a little favor.
Go on, shake your SysAdmin’s hand! And for more fun cartoons, visit The PC Weenies web site.