Cloud Computing for System Administrators

The job of a system administrator is changing in the face of cloud computing. As systems move to the cloud, attention shifts from managing physical resources to managing virtual systems. Organizations will look to system administrators for leadership in architecting and rolling out cloud environments. It can feel like a daunting task with so many cloud vendors available. Instead of focusing on the vendors and cloud technology, let's examine what this means for system administrators as they tackle these new initiatives.

Migration

For system administrators working for organizations with an existing physical server presence, the number one step is to migrate those systems to the cloud. There are many concerns and issues that can arise depending on the vendor or vendors chosen.
Does it make sense to rebuild the entire system from scratch?
Does an existing system image that offers 80%+ of the functionality needed? The most reasonable solution may be to make a virtual copy to migrate to the cloud vendor. Sysadmins need to understand the tools and support options available to them for moving systems to the cloud.

Organizations with a large amount of data, e.g. hundreds of gigabytes or terabytes, must have a strategy for moving that data to the cloud. Sysadmins can develop a migration plan that is dependent on the frequency of access and change to the data. Other aspects come into play.
An organization could mandate that no data becomes inaccessible at any time during the migration. These constraints can affect the level of effort necessary. System administrators will need to provided their expertise to level expectations with costs and time.
Thankfully, vendors offer numerous options while many third-party tools, both commercial and open-source, are available. All of these options can significantly save on time and costs if implemented correctly.

Hybrid Environments

Integrating with existing environments is almost unavoidable when moving to the cloud. Local networks often need to connect with the cloud environment. This requires provisioning of both local and cloud resources with compatible protocols.
If the sysadmin is combined with the network administrator role, establishing the proper connections through route tables will be necessary. Knowing how to configure resources to make and keep a successful connection then becomes an essential skill.

Some organizations may want to bridge together two or more cloud environments from different vendors. This is certainly possible with the proper design.
Sysadmins can design and build hybrid environments that offer the best in terms of performance and cost to meet requirements. The challenge for them is understanding which vendor is best suited for each specific need of the organization. Innovation by cloud vendors means sysadmins need to stay up-to-date on the various offerings.

Provisioning

With the advent of cloud computing, system administrators finally have renewable, recyclable resources that are easy to provision. Creating a new server is as simple as a few clicks. Replacing an existing server is just as simple.
On top of the ease, provisioning takes far less time in the cloud than in traditional environments.
Made a mistake in choosing server specs? Image the contents and start up a new server with that machine image.

Managing a cloud environment means more than just keeping all systems operational. Administrators must now keep an eye on the cost of running the environment.
Hardware costs have been replaced with paying per compute hour, sometimes with licensing costs included and sometimes not. Warranties are gone.
Support contracts have moved from the hardware vendors to the infrastructure vendors. Managed services trade full control over the setup, maintenance, and general operations with lower cost, pre-built common scenarios, and little to no required maintenance. Understanding these trade-offs will help sysadmins work with others to build a cost-effective, reliable solution.

Security

Security is a major concern in the cloud. Everybody involved in the cloud environment has a responsibility to secure it. Vendors are responsible for securing physical access to the hardware.
Securing the network and other provisioned resources falls on the organization. In smaller organizations, this could mean the sysadmin owns it.
Whether in charge of the security or not, the admin should be familiar with his or her cloud vendor's security model.

Roles, groups, users, and policies are common mechanisms for granting and restricting access. Most cloud vendors have created granular permissions.
For example, a policy might grant permission for a user to create an instance in one region and deny it in another. In cloud environments, this can be an issue.
A sysadmin will have a lot of work to do If a developer accidentally creates a script that spins up resources and fails to shut them down. Therefore, prevention is key. Just like traditional environments, security should be an upfront consideration.

Permitting or blocking network access, a role traditionally owned by network administrators, is something easily configured in the cloud. System administrators are better off understanding how this is done as well as when to use a particular method of securing resources over another.
This is especially true given how cloud-based jobs tend to merge together because of the convenience. Plus, the more skilled an administrator is in managing the environment, the more in demand he or she will be.

Uptime

Once in the cloud, an organization will expect systems to be available at all times. This does not happen without some careful consideration. Thankfully there are many tools at a sysadmin's disposal to meet uptime requirements.

Cloud vendors do a very good job of integrating their datacenters usually based on proximity to one another. This makes regional infrastructure capable of withstanding single datacenter outages if implemented to handle that situation.
A sysadmin should know which managed services offered by his or her cloud vendor support multiple datacenters and how those managed services can be utilized in the organization's environment. Examples include running a managed database with failover capabilities, websites distributed across multiple datacenters, and remote storage.

System administrators cannot be expected to work 24/7 to guarantee uptime. As a result, the use of automation becomes a critical component. Without it, scaling applications might not happen when systems really need it.
Sysadmins can use various metrics, and even custom metrics, to detect events. Those events can trigger scaling activities and notifications such as email and text messages. Configuring the right combination of event responders can make a sysadmin's job much, much easier.

Disaster Recovery

Headaches caused by hardware failures do not necessarily go away in the cloud but the chances of encountering them are significantly reduced. Underlying hardware failures do happen and typically can be recovered from assuming the proper steps were taken to backup data.
System administrators familiar with methods for backing up systems and data can establish realistic recovery time (RTO) and recovery point (RPO) objectives. In the cloud, an admin can provision environments to validate RTO and RPO without affecting production environments.
This is useful for auditing plans especially for 3rd party audits that expect recovery plans to be met.

A common reluctance for moving to the cloud is outages that are beyond the control of the sysadmin. Instead of being caught in that situation, sysadmins can prepare for the inevitable by running infrastructure globally.
If a single region becomes unavailable, another region can be made active. Treating infrastructure as code gives admins the ability to bring up new regions with relative ease. In the rare event of a global outage for a particular vendor, the infrastructure code can be used as a resource for building an environment with a different vendor. This would require a system administrator with multi-vendor cloud knowledge and experience.

The disaster recovery approach is influenced by other factors such as the budget and how important it is to keep the environment running with maximum uptime.
Maybe the best approach is to recover to a traditional datacenter environment yet that options is cost prohibitive. The sysadmin will be the expert in meeting these requirements. Without a strong understanding, he or she runs the risk of spending too much, not providing for an accurate recovery, or both.

At Cloud Academy, we have developed learning paths to help system administrators become top notch cloud architects.
Whether you plan to build cloud environments or work for cloud vendors, knowing the cloud is critical to your growth. Cloud Academy is the "go.to" resource for knowledge on cloud vendors and technologies. Start your learning path today.

 

How To Make Friends As An Adult.

The reality is that many of us do find it harder to make new friends in our later twenties and thirties, but, since this isn't really discussed all that often, we can sometimes be left wondering if it's just us who's having a hard time with it.

I don't think that's the case at all. In fact, I think for a lot of us, making friends as an adult can feel hard.

So in today's post, I want to share with you why I think this is, maybe help you feel a bit less lonely with this particular struggle, and offer up some practical, actionable guidance and therapeutic inquiries if making friends as an adult is something you're personally struggling with.

 

Obviously, having friends is a good thing.

I doubt that I need to tell you that having friends is a good thing.

It's what half the sitcoms and movies of the world center on and, as Cicero anciently opined, "Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief."

But did you also know that friendship may make us live longer?

Or that, according to a study published in the Journal for Developmental Psychology, best friends buffer the physiological stress effects in our bodies and the psychological impact on our "global self-worth."

And, as the mother of all longitudinal happiness studies – Harvard's Grant Study – as analyzed by The Atlantic pointed out, "The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the Grant Study points … to a straightforward five-word conclusion: 'Happiness is love. Full stop.'"

And, in my professional opinion, for those of us who identify as un- or under-parented, or who live far away from families of origin and aren't super connected to a local community, friends become your veritable family. Your urban family. Your family of choice. Sometimes the person or people you need or want to list as your emergency contact. Your go-to. Your person.

For these and so many thousands of other reasons, friendship is obviously critical to overall life fulfillment.

But what's also true is that, for many of us as we age up through our late twenties and thirties, it can often feel harder to maintain old friendships and more challenging still to form new friendships at quite the same intensity and depth as our prior ones.

So why is this?

 

Why is hard to make friends as an adult?

While there's no one single reason as to why it may feel harder to form friendships as an adult (we all have our unique situations that contribute to this), generally speaking, there are, I think, three primary reasons why it might feel harder:

1.        Reduction of built-in cohorts.

2.       Reduction of intensity of shared experiences.

3.       Schedule overwhelm.

Reduction of built-in cohorts.

What do I mean by reduction of built in cohorts?

Think about it: From roughly ages 5-22 we journey with a built-in cohort of companions from kindergarten to college that basically bakes in daily socializing to our lives.

We don't have to work quite so hard at curating friendships (or even acquaintances) because year after year we meet new folks in our classes, our extra curriculars, even the summer camps or summer jobs woven in throughout.

We're thrown together with people based on proximity and interests during some of the most intensely formative times of our lives.

But when you hit your twenties — unless perhaps you head off to grad school or enroll in the Peace Corps — your built-in cohorts likely reduce to those you work with or live near.

And while this definitely still exposes you to new people all of the time (think about all the job changes and moves you will or have made in your twenties and thirties!) the intensity of the connection may shift and change from days past.

 

Reduction of intensity of connection.

Please don't mistake me: I don't think life gets less intense in your late twenties and thirties. (Arguably it gets more so!)

But the shared experience of how you go through these times as you age shifts.

In your teens and twenties, your intense life experiences happen side by side on your varsity soccer team, in your dorm, in your sorority, etc., etc., Later on, though, post-college and grad school, you're still having intense moments but perhaps only sharing them with housemates or a favorite coworker or friends you may see less often.

As we age, most of us become a bit more isolated in who and how we experience intense life moments with unless we proactively work to shift that.

And given how overwhelming schedules can become in your late twenties and thirties, this takes work.

 

Schedule overwhelm.

In our late twenties and early thirties, there's usually a tightening and compacting of schedules that life demands of us.

Exploration – career and hobby wise – may fade, priorities may shift, schedules demand more from us at work or in commutes, and simply juggling the logistics to get two people together on opposite sides of a city (let alone four if you're trying to hang as a couple) can feel increasingly hard.

So all of this to say: maintaining old friendships and forming new ones may feel much more logistically challenging.

And whether or not it's reduction of built-in cohorts, reduction of intensity of shared experiences, and schedule overwhelm, or some combination of these elements or none of them at all, if you're struggling with making new friends as an adult, please realize you're not alone in this.

I think it feels hard for many people for these and many other real, practical reasons.

Ways to Build an Extraordinary Team Culture

Employee teams are one of the best ways to get things done in any business. When you take a group of independently talented people and create a team in which they can merge their talents, not only will a remarkable amount of energy and creativity be released, but their performance, loyalty and engagement will be greatly improved.

Here are five steps for building an extraordinary team culture:

1. Create a team-oriented organization

Make teamwork one of your core company values, and put a clear emphasis on self-managing teams that are empowered to make their own decisions. Don't just talk about teamwork. Show your employees the seriousness of your commitment by giving teams the authority to get their jobs done on their own terms, while ensuring they accept responsibility for the results.

2. Assign serious team goals

Give your teams really important assignments and projects, not just planning for next summer's annual company picnic. Bring teams in when you're looking at new trends in the market, or need to see things through new eyes. It's important to mix it up and not have the same people making the same decisions all the time. Ask them to challenge the status quo and the conventional wisdom. This will help to keep your company fresh and ahead of the game.

3. Encourage informal teams

More work in organizations is accomplished through informal teams than formal ones. It's therefore in your interest to encourage the proliferation of informal teams throughout your company, addressing any and all issues and opportunities that capture their interest. When your employees are able to tackle concerns themselves, without elevating every little decision to top management, you'll have a much more efficient organization.

4. Cross-train employees

When employees understand how different areas of the company work, they are more apt to make decisions that benefit the company as a whole, rather than solely their own department or group. Give your employees the opportunity to learn other people's jobs. Some organizations go as far as switching employee roles on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. And don't forget your managers. Have top executives spend a few days working on the front lines with customers or directly with your product. They'll have a new appreciation for what your regular employees go through on the job.

5. Provide team resources

No matter how talented a company's individuals might be, teams cannot be successful without the proper resources. Teams need a designated and available place where they can regularly meet. Nothing much can be achieved in an over-crowded lunch room. All employees need to be given adequate time to devote to their team meetings, with no grief from supervisors. And make sure to supply your teams with an appropriate budget if required, and the permission--with guidance--to spend it as they see best for the company.