[technion]

I know its a common view that sysadmin/devops are the same these days, but witha current sysadmin role nothing youve mentioned sounds relevant. Let's give you my list:

1. Patch Microsoft exchange with only a three hour outage window 2. Train a user to use onedrive instead of emailing 50mb files and back and forth 3. Setup eight printers for six users. Deal with 9gb printer drivers. 4. Ask an exec if he would please let you add mfa to their mailbox. 5. Sit there calmly while that exec yells like a wwe wrestler about the ways he plans to ruin you in response 6. Debate the cost of a custom mouse pad for one person across three meetings 7. Deploy any standard windows app that expects everyone be an administrator without making everyone an administrator 8. Deploy an app that expects uac disabled without disabling uac 9. Debug some finance persons 9000 line excel function

[hnlmorg]

That sounds more like Desktop Support than a SysAdmin role. My condolences if that's the job you landed when interviewing for a SysAdmin role

[0xbadcafebee]

I used to have that job, but my title wasn't Sysadmin, it was IT Manager. For companies small enough that they don't have multiple roles, you do both... but for larger companies, the user-side stuff is done by IT, and the server-side stuff is done by a Sysadmin. (And my condolences; having done that combined role, it's not easy, and you don't get paid enough!)

[hansmayer]

What you describe sounds more like a MS "Modern Workplace" / IT support in a corporate environment.

[technion]

Are we arguing that corporate workers arent "real sysadmins"?

[jagged-chisel]

Pretty sure they mean “general IT support isn’t sysadmin work.”

[jabroni_salad]

HN culture as a whole doesnt really recognize the validity of business that buy software vs build software.

[fragmede]

This HN?

> you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

[hansmayer]

Not really - there are lot of "real" sysadmins working with bought software such as RHEL and AAP...

[hansmayer]

No. There are plenty of corporate sysadmins. I am arguing that MS Workplace Sysadmins are not the ones this advent was meant for.

[Xiol]

i.e., Hell

[hansmayer]

That is hands down the most concise description, yes.

[dessimus]

>4. Ask an exec if he would please let you add mfa to their mailbox.

Ask?! This is where the org's cyber insurance is your friend. Just have the executive get the provider's clearance on him not having MFA. I'm sure that line item will change his mind, and if not, be sure to accidently mention those exemptions to those yearly auditors.

[stackskipton]

Former Exchange Admin here: 1 is easy, I used to do 70k mailboxes in middle of the day only but it requires spare hardware or virtualization with headroom.

Deploy new Server(s), patch, install Exchange, Setup DAGs, migrate everyone mailbox, swing load balancer over to new servers, uninstall Exchange from old, remove old from Active Directory, delete servers.

BTW, Upgrades now suck because Office365 uses method above so upgrade system never gets good Q&A from them.

[EvanAnderson]

Same feeling here re: migrations being easy if the Customer isn't a cheapass. Small business Customers who had the competing requirements of spending as little money as possible and having as much uptime as possible were the stressor.