David is a systems administrator, automation fanatic, part-time political junkie, and all-around nice guy living in Iowa City, Iowa. David works at the University of Iowa where he manages the data storage team for the central campus I.T. organization. https://speakerdeck.com/dsshafer 2013-05-30 15:23:39 -0400 If the history of system administration resembles firefighting, then the future more closely resembles city planning. As IT systems grow in complexity and scale, system administrators are uniquely positioned to help their organizations “connect the dots” by identifying the information that will improve decision-making and then communicating it in the right context. Topics will include: making service-level metrics part of routine system monitoring, reducing the on-call burden and shifting the balance from reactive to proactive work, anticipating useful diagnostic data, capturing historical data to identify trends, using forecasts to manage capacity and prevent problems before they occur, sharing information throughout the organization using blogs and other media, and how to demonstrate the value of these efforts to senior management. If the history of system administration resembles firefighting, then the future more closely resembles city planning. As IT systems grow in complexity and scale, system administrators are uniquely positioned to help their organizations “connect the dots” by identifying the information that will improve decision-making and then communicating it in the right context. Topics will include: making service-level metrics part of routine system monitoring, reducing the on-call burden and shifting the balance from reactive to proactive work, anticipating useful diagnostic data, capturing historical data to identify trends, using forecasts to manage capacity and prevent problems before they occur, sharing information throughout the organization using blogs and other media, and how to demonstrate the value of these efforts to senior management. Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/dsshafer/connect-the-dots-monitoring-metrics-and-alerting https://speakerdeck.com/dsshafer/connect-the-dots-monitoring-metrics-and-alerting