From Sysadmin to SRE - Josh Duffney, Octopus Deploy

This resource first appeared in issue #51 on 22 Nov 2020 and has tags Technical Leadership: Systems: Other

As research computing becomes more complex, our systems teams are going to have more and more demands on them, moving them from sysadmins to systems reliability responsibilities, and working more closely with software development teams. It’s an easier transition for sysadmins in research computing than in most fields, as our teams generally have pretty deep experience on the software side of research computing too.

Duffney’s article lays out how to start thinking about these changes to responsibilities and what people can start doing today to move in that direction. The key thing - it’s not about tools, its about how to think about your role, seeing rough spots in the build/deploy/operate cycle, and working to improve them.