[PLUG] Learning Linux Sys Admin & Linux/Open Source tools

Rich Burroughs rich at richburroughs.com
Mon Aug 29 14:56:59 UTC 2016


If you are looking for an Ops Engineer type role (you said it was one of
your options), in a lot of shops you'd be using Chef or Puppet in that type
of role. I'm partial to Puppet (I'm going to work there in a few weeks in
exactly this kind of role), but I know a ton of really smart people who use
Chef too. Also Ansible seems to be gaining in popularity.

Other shops don't use these tools at all or are moving away from them as
they adopt containers. Learning things like Docker and Kubernetes could be
really helpful too.

There are less defined learning paths for some of these things. The Devops
tool space is completely in flux right now and I'm really not sure where
things are going to end up.

If you are interested in Puppet, there's a pretty awesome Puppet User's
Group here in Portland. Sometimes the actual engineers who wrote the code
for a given feature are the ones presenting at a meeting.

You also mentioned Python and my impression is that it's very popular in
operations shops. A lot of the job nowadays seems to be about glueing
together different open source apps, so being able to interact with APIs is
important. The Requests library for Python is great.

Puppet does have training classes and I'm sure Chef does too. I would be
surprised if they're not pretty expensive. But Puppet does have a VM you
can grab for free called the Learning VM and some exercises you can walk
through to get your feet wet.

The Ops Engineer space is a lot more confusing than the traditional
sysadmin one now, but I'd make the argument that those jobs are probably
going to land you in more inseresting shops/roles. I think it's really
where the industry is heading.

One of the big shifts in this kind of role from the traditional sysadmin is
writing unit tests/acceptance tests for your code. I've found it very
liberating. If your tests are good you can refactor and know pretty quickly
whether things are broken or not. Both Chef and Puppet have tools built on
top of Ruby's Rspec, that's another good thing to get your feet wet with.
And Python has its own testing tools.

Sorry if this is kinda rambling and vague but that's honestly how this
space feels right now. I'm still going through this shift myself. I was the
sysadmin who hardly wrote any code for many years and now I think of myself
as an engineer (not a particularly great one).


Rich

P.S. Perl makes my brain hurt too, it's not just you.

P.P.S. My last PLUG talk was in something like 2000 (not kidding), but I
could possibly do something Puppet related if people are interested. I did
a talk at Puppet Camp Portland in January on how to get your feet wet with
module development and some of the testing tools for it. That one might be
helpful. I wouldn't be able to until at least October.



On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 3:17 PM Mike C. <mconnors1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> After many years of working as a Network Engineer and being a Linux
> hobbyist and doing some junior Linux Sys Admin gigs, I've decided to make
> the push into developing the skills and acquiring the knowledge to secure
> gainful employment as a Linux Sys Admin and/or DevOps engineer.
>
> I just took advantage of The Linux Foundation's 25th Anniversary 50% off
> sale and I'm enrolled in the following self-study courses.
>
> Essentials of System Administration
>
> Linux Networking and Administration
>
> Linux Security Fundamentals
>
> Software Defined Networking Fundamentals
> First question I have is has anyone else taken any of these courses and if
> so I'm interested in hearing what you got from the course and what it's
> done for you in your job.
>
> Now for the more open conversation part. There is a big difference between
> being a Linux hobbyist / Jr. Sys Admin managing a few servers at a small
> company and learning, getting experience with the vast array of common and
> uncommon Linux/FOSS apps and tools.
>
> Cobbler, Puppet, Salt, OpenStack, Graphite, Logstash, memcached, Perl,
> asterisk, RabbitMQ, openLDAP, Isilon, Arista, Zimbra, Asterisk, RabbitMQ,
> KVM, ZFS, InfluxDB, Cfengine.
>
> I know about some of these and I've even worked with a few of them. I
> studied Computer Science in a previous life and PERL makes my brain hurt. I
> can do simple stuff in shell, Python and Ruby.
>
> The road ahead seems very unclear as I know 2 common skills/experience that
> I'm sorely lacking in are scripting and automation. Neither of which will I
> get from any of the Linux Foundation courses.
>
> So I don't really know how to get there from here as what I'm finding is
> that most Linux Sys Admin jobs are Sr. level and they want folks to walk
> through the door with many years of work experience with the apps, tools
> and skills I've mentioned.
>
> I know that sometimes the Advanced Topics cover some of these topics, which
> is all well, good and fine but it doesn't provide any hands-on experience.
>
> If you've been in these shoes before or where in these shoes, what would
> you recommend/? Should I just setup a home lab and start learning all this
> stuff?
>
> It would be awesome to connect with Sr. level experienced Linux Sys Admin
> folks.
>
> Thank you for taking the time to wade through my ramblings!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mike
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