Thanks Bud, very glad I found your channel. I am a one man shop in a biz that never had an IT department and have been playing catchup for a year. I was the "fix it" guy where I came from, my associate would determine what needed to be done, implemented and I'd figure it out but trying to figure out what all needs to be done now on top of being the fix it guy is extremely daunting. It's a heavy burden for sure, add to that all the billing, contracts...etc and I'm a busy boy. This channel is extremely helpful, thanks again.
I am an intern in a company that handles cloud computing and this is what they do on daily basis and i have no idea what to learn or to do. They tried to teach me when they're not too busy but most of the time they just give me something to read and expect me to be able to do it. I found your channel and videos by chance. Most of the videos came out has always been an Indian fella trying his hardest to teach but i cant comprehend him. But with you, i can understand it easily. Thank you for your videos!
Btw, my supervisor wants to me create a policy that forces the wallpaper on a vm pc and also force starts notepad when login in the vm pc. Can you help me on this Alexander?
@@MoonV29 Not sure if you've already figured it out a month later. You may want to look at group policies for this. I don't know if you are using a domain environment in your VM or if you just need to use local group policies for that VM. I don't remember the exact configuration, but there are policies you can set that will set a custom wallpaper on a computer as well as startup programs.
Some tips: A syslog server to consolidate logs from all kinds of devices can be installed free (as in beer) on any Linux distro, just install rsyslog or similar. Even if you only have a dozen or so systems as in a small business, you can consolidate them all to one system by pointing all your firewall, switch, router, ESXi hosts, etc. to that syslog server. There's no real excuse not to have one. There's a Windows client for rsyslog (not sure if that part is free) but you can also use Windows log forwarding and forward events from all Windows servers to a single Windows server, at the very least, if you are mostly Windows do that. Viewing logs should be a rare thing. You'll want to parse the logs via scripting looking for specific things, maybe the word 'warning' or 'error'. I send vCenter logs to our syslog server and then have a shell script parsing that log for specific vSphere related issues. We generate hundreds of gigabytes worth of logs every *day*-we log everything, no one can 'view the logs' especially in real time. So, use grep along with sed/awk/cut (or perl or python or ?) and figure out what things are important for you to know. It varies with what your focus is. Learn to spot via parsing the log for "paired log entries" when something fails, like a disk, but is repaired when a hot spare is automatically used (you do configure your arrays with hot spares, right?). With some basic shell scripting, you can have your syslog parsing script send you an email/text alert when things need your attention. Email alerts are great but you can suffer from 'alert fatigue' if you have all the alerts that any system can generate sent to you. So, pick the things you really want to know about, systems that are not responding, services that are down, and so on. Example: Similar to above, if you array sends an email that a disk has failed, you should then receive a message that the host spare was used and the array was rebuilt on the spare (again, you are configuring your arrays with a hot spare, right?). By only getting those message that are real important, you can avoid 'alert fatigue'. Outage/system down alerts--make you alerts 'smart'. Make your alerting check other things before sending an alert, like do a traceroute or check that VM hosts are up and running and put that in the email. If a remote site has services and your monitoring system doesn't get a response from a server at that site, check to make sure that the link to that site is up and running, that way, you don't get a barrage of alerts for every device at that site, but roll those up in an alert email that tells you everything at that site is not reachable. Just a tip to reduce 'alert fatigue'. Learn to implement "self healing" by detecting a service that is stopped and start the service, at least attempt to. Windows' services have that option but it is not usually configured, configure it and create a script that runs when it can't start to tell you that the server may be up, but the service is failing to start. If you have something like SharePoint and you have it across three servers (front end, app and DB), if you get that http error 5xx when your monitor script detects the SharePoint page is returning an error, check that the MS SQL Server service on the DB is running. A quick batch file is all that is needed. That's the kind of stuff that will keep you from burning out. Backups - make sure your backup product show a clear success/fail in the subject line (Veeam does this really well) that way you don't even need to open emails from your backup product if it has [Success] in the subject line. I have over 400 VMs and 25 physical systems being backed up overnight and I can scan the subject lines from Veeam and tell in about 60 seconds if all the backups were successful or not, pin those that weren't for closer inspection. Have a morning "sanity" email that is generated from a script and sent earlier than normal start operations (mine is sent at 6AM). This isn't a system down email, but a 'here's what's working and running'-something that shows that all the systems are up and running,not just ping, but that web servers are serving up pages, VM hosts are up and running, these services that are important are running etc. and so on. This can really save you time and make you look good. Put anything in there that you want to know about before you leave to head to work. Our DBA put her MS SQL Server servers in a text file and then has a batch file that does a 'sc \\server query mssqlserver' on each one and pipes that to a text file that is sent in an email to her first thing in the morning. Little things like that can save you time. In short, a good SysAdmin doesn't spend a lot of time scanning logs (our logs form several hundred systems scroll so fast that it's just a blur of text), rather a good SysAdmin uses the tools of shell scripts (Linux or Windows, both can be done) along with regular expressions and text parsing tools. It's the old 'work smart not hard' deal. Yes, even if, or rather, especially if you work for a small business where you wear all the hats. On command line use. The main reason why the CLI is so important and why experienced SysAdmins spend the entire day in them, is not because it makes you look 'cool' (it does, especially when you have a screen full of terminals) but looks aside, if you can do it at the command line, you can automate it. So, ditch the GUI, even in Windows, you can do anything-and more using the CLI. PowerShell is just that, powerful (it has a horrible syntax, IMO but I'm used to bash so...) but I don't deny that it will make your life easy. There is a learning curve, a pain point, there's no way around that. For Windows Server administration, the best way I've found to force someone to learn the CLI is to give them a management server, replace the explorer.exe in the shell registry key with cmd.exe (or powershell.exe) then tell them they must manage the Windows environment using commands. I'll usually tell interns that I don't want to hear the clicking of a mouse. Just my thoughts.
This is an awesome video! I been in IT for just 3 years now, and I am currently a System Administrator for a small business. Sounds like we do the same daily tasks. I am going to go through your videos now to see how I can better myself from your lessons!
Thanks Alexander. I have a question regarding documentation. How you are doing documentation as system admin ? I mean what are the tools you suggest that we should use.
Hi I really like your videos, I would like to ask you where should I star working I just got my CCNA and the only experience I have is fixing laptops and PCs in my free time, you have experience and I really love networking
Hi there I have just passed my Google it surport professional course but I am struggling to keep it going on my home computer is there any task that you can advise me of that I can do on my home windows 10 pc please
You absolutely can. However, it really depends on the company you work for and what they will allow. I work remotely 100% now. Previous employers, and pre-covid, I was working 1-3 days a week remotely. Hope this helps!
@@kt11540 I would go with anything from CompTIA if you are looking for universal. They are vendor agnostic. Really depends on what your focus is going to be.
That is a great question! I run into a ton of different applications it would be hard to sum them all up. Usually it's the standard stuff, O365, AV/End Point Security stuff, Active Directory, pretty standard Microsoft stack.
@@thecybersecuritymindset I have been interning in the helpdesk department for two years now. What skill or technology will help me escape from the helpdesk position?
I would LOVE to show some of the stuff I work on in real time, but it is very difficult to do so given the sensitive nature of some of the things I work on. I try to duplicate real world issues in my lab.
I have work in companies where the IT department in general is seem as a non-productive branch of the tree, no matter what you do, you are not productive, they think you are just sitting there watching the monitor.
Thanks Bud, very glad I found your channel. I am a one man shop in a biz that never had an IT department and have been playing catchup for a year. I was the "fix it" guy where I came from, my associate would determine what needed to be done, implemented and I'd figure it out but trying to figure out what all needs to be done now on top of being the fix it guy is extremely daunting. It's a heavy burden for sure, add to that all the billing, contracts...etc and I'm a busy boy. This channel is extremely helpful, thanks again.
I am an intern in a company that handles cloud computing and this is what they do on daily basis and i have no idea what to learn or to do. They tried to teach me when they're not too busy but most of the time they just give me something to read and expect me to be able to do it. I found your channel and videos by chance. Most of the videos came out has always been an Indian fella trying his hardest to teach but i cant comprehend him. But with you, i can understand it easily. Thank you for your videos!
Btw, my supervisor wants to me create a policy that forces the wallpaper on a vm pc and also force starts notepad when login in the vm pc. Can you help me on this Alexander?
@@MoonV29 Not sure if you've already figured it out a month later. You may want to look at group policies for this. I don't know if you are using a domain environment in your VM or if you just need to use local group policies for that VM. I don't remember the exact configuration, but there are policies you can set that will set a custom wallpaper on a computer as well as startup programs.
Some tips:
A syslog server to consolidate logs from all kinds of devices can be installed free (as in beer) on any Linux distro, just install rsyslog or similar. Even if you only have a dozen or so systems as in a small business, you can consolidate them all to one system by pointing all your firewall, switch, router, ESXi hosts, etc. to that syslog server. There's no real excuse not to have one. There's a Windows client for rsyslog (not sure if that part is free) but you can also use Windows log forwarding and forward events from all Windows servers to a single Windows server, at the very least, if you are mostly Windows do that.
Viewing logs should be a rare thing. You'll want to parse the logs via scripting looking for specific things, maybe the word 'warning' or 'error'. I send vCenter logs to our syslog server and then have a shell script parsing that log for specific vSphere related issues. We generate hundreds of gigabytes worth of logs every *day*-we log everything, no one can 'view the logs' especially in real time. So, use grep along with sed/awk/cut (or perl or python or ?) and figure out what things are important for you to know. It varies with what your focus is. Learn to spot via parsing the log for "paired log entries" when something fails, like a disk, but is repaired when a hot spare is automatically used (you do configure your arrays with hot spares, right?). With some basic shell scripting, you can have your syslog parsing script send you an email/text alert when things need your attention.
Email alerts are great but you can suffer from 'alert fatigue' if you have all the alerts that any system can generate sent to you. So, pick the things you really want to know about, systems that are not responding, services that are down, and so on. Example: Similar to above, if you array sends an email that a disk has failed, you should then receive a message that the host spare was used and the array was rebuilt on the spare (again, you are configuring your arrays with a hot spare, right?). By only getting those message that are real important, you can avoid 'alert fatigue'.
Outage/system down alerts--make you alerts 'smart'. Make your alerting check other things before sending an alert, like do a traceroute or check that VM hosts are up and running and put that in the email. If a remote site has services and your monitoring system doesn't get a response from a server at that site, check to make sure that the link to that site is up and running, that way, you don't get a barrage of alerts for every device at that site, but roll those up in an alert email that tells you everything at that site is not reachable. Just a tip to reduce 'alert fatigue'.
Learn to implement "self healing" by detecting a service that is stopped and start the service, at least attempt to. Windows' services have that option but it is not usually configured, configure it and create a script that runs when it can't start to tell you that the server may be up, but the service is failing to start. If you have something like SharePoint and you have it across three servers (front end, app and DB), if you get that http error 5xx when your monitor script detects the SharePoint page is returning an error, check that the MS SQL Server service on the DB is running. A quick batch file is all that is needed. That's the kind of stuff that will keep you from burning out.
Backups - make sure your backup product show a clear success/fail in the subject line (Veeam does this really well) that way you don't even need to open emails from your backup product if it has [Success] in the subject line. I have over 400 VMs and 25 physical systems being backed up overnight and I can scan the subject lines from Veeam and tell in about 60 seconds if all the backups were successful or not, pin those that weren't for closer inspection.
Have a morning "sanity" email that is generated from a script and sent earlier than normal start operations (mine is sent at 6AM). This isn't a system down email, but a 'here's what's working and running'-something that shows that all the systems are up and running,not just ping, but that web servers are serving up pages, VM hosts are up and running, these services that are important are running etc. and so on. This can really save you time and make you look good. Put anything in there that you want to know about before you leave to head to work. Our DBA put her MS SQL Server servers in a text file and then has a batch file that does a 'sc \\server query mssqlserver' on each one and pipes that to a text file that is sent in an email to her first thing in the morning. Little things like that can save you time.
In short, a good SysAdmin doesn't spend a lot of time scanning logs (our logs form several hundred systems scroll so fast that it's just a blur of text), rather a good SysAdmin uses the tools of shell scripts (Linux or Windows, both can be done) along with regular expressions and text parsing tools. It's the old 'work smart not hard' deal. Yes, even if, or rather, especially if you work for a small business where you wear all the hats.
On command line use. The main reason why the CLI is so important and why experienced SysAdmins spend the entire day in them, is not because it makes you look 'cool' (it does, especially when you have a screen full of terminals) but looks aside, if you can do it at the command line, you can automate it. So, ditch the GUI, even in Windows, you can do anything-and more using the CLI. PowerShell is just that, powerful (it has a horrible syntax, IMO but I'm used to bash so...) but I don't deny that it will make your life easy. There is a learning curve, a pain point, there's no way around that. For Windows Server administration, the best way I've found to force someone to learn the CLI is to give them a management server, replace the explorer.exe in the shell registry key with cmd.exe (or powershell.exe) then tell them they must manage the Windows environment using commands. I'll usually tell interns that I don't want to hear the clicking of a mouse.
Just my thoughts.
I was a COBOL programmer for 30 years but recently got a job as a Citrix system admin. I'll check out your other videos!
Thanks!
This is an awesome video! I been in IT for just 3 years now, and I am currently a System Administrator for a small business.
Sounds like we do the same daily tasks.
I am going to go through your videos now to see how I can better myself from your lessons!
Glad I could help!
what's your pay? I am from EU.
@@pewlivepie5006 im a devops engineer now for the last year at 190k/year Canadian
@@hungariannerd8445 how did you jump from a sysadmin to a devops engineer if u dont mind me asking?
i made youtube videosabout it
New system admin here, glad I found your channel
cool another I.T racing fan!
i just got a job as a sysadmin at 21 years old :)
Nice work!
@@thecybersecuritymindset All to fund the passion of goin fast in circles! thank you
U still doing sys admin?
How did u manage to get it?
Thanks Alexander. I have a question regarding documentation. How you are doing documentation as system admin ? I mean what are the tools you suggest that we should use.
Thank you for giving insights.
I would like to know some of the softwares one needs to use as a systems admin...
Valuable information! Please continue to provide this type of weekly resource. Very helpful. I subscribed and look forward to more awesome content!
Thank you! Will do!
great informational videos! please keep them coming!
Thanks for putting this up.
My pleasure!
Hi I really like your videos, I would like to ask you where should I star working I just got my CCNA and the only experience I have is fixing laptops and PCs in my free time, you have experience and I really love networking
Great job
You are giving highly useful information...Thanks
Great insights. Thank you for sharing.
Alex thank you very much for your best advice, also please inform us some tools and software's mostly used for the system administration purpose.
I'm here because I want to become a great Systems Administrator
What is the exact job of system administrator?
And what are the 5 possible job of system administrator?
How to setup email notifications for log on exchange?
Awesome 👌 video
Nice with the shirt---fellow Mustang owner here
Haha thanks! Someday I will get mine back on the road.
what are the most problems that may encounter when you are a server admin? and please state the solution on the problems you will mention
Hi there I have just passed my Google it surport professional course but I am struggling to keep it going on my home computer is there any task that you can advise me of that I can do on my home windows 10 pc please
Thank you for this video it really helped 😊👍🏻
Glad it helped!
Great info! 👍
one questione can you do a video on how you became a system administrator and which studies did you do
Sysadmins aren't just sysadmins they do networking/security/developing programs/ keeping eye on infrastructure and much more!
Could this be done with a monitoring softeware such as Icinga?
Love this very insightful
Insightful thanks!
What are the applications/tools that you are using as a sys admin
Are you looking for software tools? Anything specific?
Can you work from home a systems admin?
You absolutely can. However, it really depends on the company you work for and what they will allow. I work remotely 100% now. Previous employers, and pre-covid, I was working 1-3 days a week remotely. Hope this helps!
@@thecybersecuritymindset there are so many exams for systems admins can you tell me what will be the most universal?
@@kt11540 I would go with anything from CompTIA if you are looking for universal. They are vendor agnostic. Really depends on what your focus is going to be.
Hi , I’m having a system administrator job interview coming up, please I need your assistance
Did you get the job?
Hey Alex....can u make a video on the realtime work that u do....it would be great
I would love to but it is very hard as I work on a lot of confidential systems.
@@thecybersecuritymindset understood... anyway thanks for the useful content that u provide us with
What software do you encounter at work?
That is a great question! I run into a ton of different applications it would be hard to sum them all up. Usually it's the standard stuff, O365, AV/End Point Security stuff, Active Directory, pretty standard Microsoft stack.
@@thecybersecuritymindset I have been interning in the helpdesk department for two years now. What skill or technology will help me escape from the helpdesk position?
@@DailyThingsInLife do a server certification
m get get job as system admin without any ntwrking diploma
?
Really depends on the employer. Some will favor experience. Some will favor education. Just need to find the right one.
Yes, sir please teach me real time
Hey bro make a video on your real time project
I would LOVE to show some of the stuff I work on in real time, but it is very difficult to do so given the sensitive nature of some of the things I work on. I try to duplicate real world issues in my lab.
Hay quá
Good
Thanks
I have work in companies where the IT department in general is seem as a non-productive branch of the tree, no matter what you do, you are not productive, they think you are just sitting there watching the monitor.
Yup, been there.
Who else is watching this in 2024 after CrowdStrike about took down the world lol
Wow