1. "You have to know how things work on a starship..." (Star Trek II)
Kirk's
old enemy, Khan, took command of the Reliant, a Federation starship.
When the Reliant approached the Enterprise, Kirk hesitated to
raise his shields. This gave Khan the opportunity to attack
and
severely damage the defenseless Enterprise. Kirk retaliated
by
using his superior knowledge of Federation technology to remotely order
the Reliant to drop its shields, allowing Kirk to launch an effective
counterattack. When asked how he knew the strategy would
work,
Kirk remarked that (if you're the captain) you have to know how things
work on a starship.
Similarly, if you're a
Windows System Administrator, you have to know how PC hardware works
and how Windows itself works if you're going to be very effective.
Since becoming a Windows administrator, I've had to dig
deeply
into the Registry, crash logs, technical references, and programming
guides to solve
some of the more challenging issues to come my way. The more
I
know about how things work (or how they're supposed to work), the more
effective I tend to be.
2. "A no-win situation is the possibility every commander may face."
(Star Trek II)
In
Starfleet Academy, the Federation tests potential officers by putting
them in a simulated situation that they cannot win. This is
done
to see how they react to the pressure and inevitable defeat.
Having just "failed" this unpassable test, a cadet asks Kirk
why
they are put through it. He says that a no-win situation is a
possibility every commander may face at some point (though Kirk himself
cheated his way out of it and won the "no-win" scenario).
In
system administration, there are problems that will come your way that
you simply can't fix. Maybe it's a system that's been hit by
too many viruses, a Registry that's too corrupted to be sorted out, or
hardware that just doesn't work. You can spend hours or days
trying to fix a problem like this without ever really solving it.
You have to know when you're facing a "no-win scenario" and
cut
your losses by walking away from the
problem. That might mean wiping the system and reinstalling
everything instead of spending hours correcting a series of problems,
tossing out a piece of hardware that "ought to work" but
somehow doesn't, or giving up on software that simply doesn't do what
it's advertised to do.
3. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... or the one."
(Star Trek II)
Spock
gave up his life at the end of Star Trek II to save the Enterprise and
her crew. When asked by Captain Kirk why he did it, Spock
replied
that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, or the one.
In other words, Spock knew that by giving up his life he
could
save many others.
In system administration, you're probably not
going to be faced with a "life or death" choice like this, but almost
daily you're faced with situations where the needs of your end user
community ("the many") dictate actions you ("the one") take.
For
example, you may find yourself at the office after hours, sacrificing
your personal time in order to complete a software upgrade, patch a
server, or otherwise do something that would inconvenience users if you
tried to do it during the work day. Chances are, you're also
probably
"on call" to help those same users if they have problems late at night
or on the weekend, and you're expected to help them. The
needs of
the many, in this case, outweigh your own needs.
4.
"Mr. Scott, have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a
factor of four? Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my
reputation
as a miracle worker?" (Star Trek III)
Mr.
Scott admitted to Captain Kirk in Star Trek III that he had always
multiplied his repair estimates by a factor of four. This
gave
him the opportunity to take all the time he needed to solve a problem,
while still completing the task more quickly than the captain had
expected. As a result, he was seen as a miracle worker by
Captain
Kirk.
In system administration, you're often asked how long
something is going to take. While I don't recommend
multiplying your estimate by four, I do believe that you should always
practice the principle of "underpromise and over-deliver" when dealing
with others. A task that looks like it should be a one-hour
job
can easily become a 2-3 hour job if things go wrong, the system begins
responding too slowly, an emergency arises that you need to address
first, etc. If you tell someone something will take an hour
and
you aren't done two hours later, they're angry. But if you
tell
them it will take two hours and you're done in 90 minutes, you're a
miracle worker. I'm not suggesting that you make a habit of
lying, but rather that you give yourself a little breathing room to
allow for things you might have forgotten, things that take longer than
expected, or unexpected circumstances.
5. "The fancier the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
(Star Trek III)
In
Star Trek III, Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise essentially
"stole" the ship in order to save Spock and Doctor McCoy. Mr.
Scott expected the Federation's newest, fastest, fanciest ship (the
Excelsior) to be given the task of pursuing the older, slower
Enterprise. He removed a handful of critical computer chips
from
the Excelsior's system while working on it, preventing the ship from
being able to give chase. When asked how he managed to
sabotage
the Excelsior in a way that they didn't detect, he replied that the
fancier the plumbing was, the easier it was to stop up the drain.
In other words, the systems on the Excelsior were so
complicated
that it was easy to screw them up.
System
administrators often have several ways to deal with a situation.
Some ways are simpler than others.
You should always be wary of any solution that has too many
potential "points of failure". While an elaborate Perl script
might push out an urgent security patch to 10 systems simultaneously
from the comfort of your desk chair, you could over-think the script
and end up
accidentally applying that patch to 100 systems you didn't want to
apply it to.
Sometimes it's better to keep things simple, because it can
reduce the chance of failure or allow you to respond more quickly.
Similarly, you can "over engineer" a solution to a problem
and
spend more time architecting a clever solution to something you could
fix manually in a few minutes.
6. "Sometimes the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many."
(Star Trek III)
When
asked why the crew of the Enterprise risked their lives and their
careers to save Spock in Star Trek III, Captain Kirk told him that
sometimes the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.
In
other words, Spock was their friend and they were willing to risk
themselves because he meant more to them than their lives or careers.
In
systems administration tasks, sometimes you have to do things that make
a lot of people very unhappy. For example, when pushing out
security patches it is often necessary to reboot someone's PC to
complete the installation. Naturally, if that person has
documents open in Microsoft Office when you reboot them, they're not
going to be happy about it. Multiply that over a large
organization, and that simple reboot action can upset a lot of people.
However, as a system administrator, you're responsible for
protecting your network from malware. While "the many" users'
needs may dictate that their PCs not be rebooted, your responsibility
as "the one" who protects the network must outweigh theirs.
This
is not to say that you're more important, or that you should be fine
with mid-day reboots as a matter of practice, but rather that there
will be times in the job where you've got to risk the wrath of the
users for a greater good.
7. "Perhaps 'because it is there' is not sufficient reason for climbing
a mountain." (Star Trek V)
In
Star Trek V, Captain Kirk is attempting to climb a mountain when he
slips and begins to fall off. Spock saves him at the last
second.
Later, Spock tells Kirk that perhaps "because it is there"
isn't
a good enough reason to risk your life climbing a mountain.
There
are times in system administration where there is something that you
can technically do, but which isn't a good idea when examined more
closely. Maybe you have a script that could update all the
company's computers with the latest Windows Service Pack overnight.
You might even be tempted to do it, since your management's
asking you about when you're going to get the job done.
However,
just because you can roll that Service Pack out in a heartbeat doesn't
mean that's the right thing to do. You could come in the next
morning and find out that the Service Pack you pushed out last night
broke the salespeople's contact management software, the accountants'
general ledger program, and the CEO's favorite screensaver.
Suddenly, instead of being the miracle worker you thought you
were going to be, you're on everyone's hit list. There are
times
in system administration when caution is needed, and experience will
often help you know when climbing the proverbial mountain is a good
idea and when it isn't.
8.
"An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." (Star Trek VI)
In
Star Trek VI, when attempting to figure out who assassinated the
Klingon Chancelor, Spock began investigating his shipmates to identify
the assassins. When he came up with a seemingly incredible
solution, he uttered the famous line above (which is paraphrased from
Sherlock Holmes).
System
administrators are often called upon to troubleshoot the strangest
problems. Sometimes the solution to those problems can be
counterintuitive, and may even sound "impossible". Here's a
real-life example from my Windows 98 days. The company had
just
implemented a new application in the Marketing and Finance areas.
For some reason, the laptop users in Marketing were getting a
lot
of "out of memory" errors when trying to use the application.
They requested more RAM. We installed it.
The out of
memory errors became even more frequent. I started doing some
research online and learned about a table kept by Windows 98 that was
used to manage the available RAM. My research indicated that
the
table had a fixed size and under certain conditions could "fill up" on
the user. One way you could free up space in this table was
to
remove some RAM. I tried this on the Marketing laptops and,
sure
enough, the "out of memory" errors went away. So, as
impossible
as it might seem, removing memory from the machines cleared up an "out
of memory" error.
9. "People can be very frightened of change." (Star Trek VI)
In
Star Trek VI, the Klingons suffered an environmental disaster that
threatened to destroy their civilization. As a result, they
sought peace with the Federation, a change from their long-standing
policy of conflict and subjugation. In both the Federation
and
the Klingon Empire, there were people who had hated their rivals so
much, and for so long, that the prospect of peace between the two
governments was something they couldn't stomach. It was said
that
such people were frightened of change (the coming peace).
This is very true in the Information Technology (IT)
world. When system administrators are about to make any kind
of a
signficant change, they're often required to document, justify,
explain, and test the change well in advance of making it.
Inevitably, you will eventually change something that causes
a
problem. Perhaps some Excel macros quit working after you
upgrade
Microsoft Office, or the new version of Internet Explorer doesn't work
with an application used in Human Resources. Those
unfortunate
consequences tend to make organizations as a whole resistant to change,
even fearful of it. As a system administrator, one of your
responsibilities is to introduce change in a manner that allows you to
control the potential negative impacts.
When we planned to roll
out Windows XP Service Pack 2 (a while ago), I helped test as many of
the applications used around the company as possible. I would
try
to identify if Firewall changes would be needed, if the application
required one of the "compatibility mode" options, if it would need to
be
patched, etc. The point of all the hours I put in doing those
things was to minimize the disruptive effects of upgrading to Windows
XP Service Pack 2. By all accounts, our hard work paid off
and
there were few, if any, complaints once the software began rolling out
across the organization.
10. "One of the advantages of being
a captain, Doctor, is being able to ask for advice without necessarily
having to take it." (ST:TOS "Dagger of the Mind")
In the
original Star Trek series, Captain Kirk often sought the advice of his
senior officers. Even though he sought their advice on how to
deal with a problem, he did not always heed it.
Systems
administrators typically work in teams. Members of teams
typically have one or more areas of expertise, and other areas where
their expertise may be less extensive. As a member of the
team,
you should always be willing to seek the advice of your teammates when
you're about to do anything that might reflect negatively on the team
if it goes wrong. Just because you ask for a teammate's
advice,
however, doesn't mean you have to follow it. Sometimes your
own
expertise or experience may "trump" the advice of a teammate, however
well-intentioned and intelligent the advice might be. The key
lies in knowing when to take advice and when to ignore it, which is
something you learn with time and experience.
11. "Power is danger." (ST:TOS "Balance of Terror")
A
commonly uttered security mantra is that you should give users only the
amount of administrative ability necessary for them to do their jobs,
and no more. If users don't have a business need for
administrator access to their systems, they shouldn't have it.
In
this way, if those same users introduce malware to your network via an
infected floppy, CD, USB key, etc., that malware will have a hard time
spreading. Having no administrator access will also prevent
them
from installing unauthorized or pirated software, shutting off their
computer's firewall, or doing other things that could compromise the
security and stability of your network.
Similarly, as a system
administrator you should always be careful and deliberate with your
actions when you're using administrator permission on a machine.
Don't do indescriminate web browsing with the administrator
account. Don't run untested scripts against lots of end user
machines. Don't delete files you aren't sure about.
In short, recognize that your "godlike" powers over the
computer make you dangerous, and always use those powers sparingly and
carefully.
12. "Leave bigotry in your quarters; there's no room for it on the
bridge." (ST:TOS "Balance of Terror")
System
administrators tend to be the kind of people who like to tinker with
things. Even though we may be Mac administrators, we dabble
in
Windows or Linux. If we're Linux administrators, we can't
resist
the urge to fiddle with a script on OS X or a batch file on Windows.
Because we have a lot of experience, we can sometimes become
opinionated about technology, to the point of bigotry. In a
corporate setting, this kind of bigotry can be suicidal. If
your
response to every Windows problem you're asked to resolve is to launch
into a missive about how this wouldn't be a problem on the Mac, you're
in the wrong job. Unless they happen to ask for them, users
don't
want your opinions about the technology they're using. Most
of
them could care less whether they're using Windows, OS X, Linux, or
something else. They just want to do their jobs, and they
need
you to fix the problem that's keeping them from working. You
may
have a long list of reasons why the company should dump Windows and
move to Linux or OS X. They might be very intelligent, objective, and
thoughtful reasons. But if you're being paid to administer
Windows, you should keep those opinions to yourself unless asked for
them. You'll just create unrest and friction with your co-workers, and
that doesn't help anyone.
13. "The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity
of play." (ST:TOS "Shore Leave")
Most
people adorn their offices with a few well-chosen artifacts.
Perhaps they're pictures of loved ones, awards they've won,
or
souvenirs from their travels. System administrators have
those
things too, but they also tend to like little toys. For
example,
I've often got a netbook, an MP3 player, and some other gizmo keeping
me company. They might be expensive gadgets to other people,
but
they're fun toys to me, and it helps me to reduce my stress to play
around with
them occasionally... such as on my lunch hour. Systems
administrators tend to be fun, playful, and funny people (once you get
to know them). The complex web of information we have to
master
and use on a daily basis tends to make us seek out "fun" when we're not
working or need a break.
14. "Insufficient facts always invite danger." (ST:TOS "Space Seed")
In
the original Star Trek, Captain Kirk freed Khan Noonien Singh and his
crew from an extended hibernation. Khan and his crew were
evasive
about who they were and what they were doing on the ship they were
rescued from. Both Spock and Kirk did their best to extract
information from them, but got very little. Kirk noticed that
Spock seemed uncomfortable with their new guests. When asked
why,
he explained that they knew little about them, and that this lack of
knowledge could be dangerous. Later, Khan and his crew
attempted
to take control of the Enterprise. Spock was right not to
trust
them.
System
administrators who are willing to jump in and start
working with something they know little about often learn through (bad)
experience to become more cautious. In handling security
patches,
for instance, I'm very careful. When a new patch comes in, I
have
no way of knowing if that patch will break a critical business system,
prevent systems from booting up, or force a reboot in the middle
of the CEO's presentation to the executive board. Before I
release the patch to anyone else, I try it on my own system first to
see how it behaves. I then try it on my teammates and nearby
co-workers. If it doesn't cause a problem for them, I begin
slowly fanning it out to the rest of the company. Once I
learn
that the patch seems harmless I will then allow it to make its way on
to large numbers of computers. I make every effort to learn
as
much as I can about the patch before letting it "run loose" on the
network.
15. "Either one of us, by himself, is expendable. Both of us are not."
(ST:TOS "The Devil in the Dark")
It's
not uncommon in system administration for there to be one person who
handles a specific task, with another person serving as backup to that
person. The logic is to ensure that if the primary person
gets
sick, goes on vacation, takes a job elsewhere, or is hit by a bus, the
team can continue to do the things it is responsible for.
It's a
bad idea for the primary and the backup to be out of the office at the
same time, and should be avoided if at all possible.
Inevitably,
the day you're both out of the office there will be a major crisis in
your area of expertise, and no one there who can resolve the problem.
16.
"If I can have honesty, it's easier to overlook mistakes." (ST:TOS
"Space Seed")
Sooner
or later, you're going to make a mistake. Maybe you
accidentally
deleted some critical files from a server. Maybe you meant to
adjust the firewall settings and ended up turning it off. It
might be something relatively minor, or heart-stoppingly major.
Whatever mistake you make, be willing to own up to it.
There's nothing to be gained by lying to your teammates or
management to cover up a mistake. If you own up to your
mistakes,
people will respect and trust you. If you lie about them,
they
soon realize they can't rely on you and begin to resent you for the
time they spend uncovering the truth. Demand honesty from
your coworkers, but deliver it in return.
17. "No one can guarantee the actions of another." (ST:TOS "Day of the
Dove")
As
part of system administration, or indeed any job, it can be necessary
to make assumptions about how people will react to something and
predict how they'll deal with it. But just because a
particular
reaction seems logical, reasonable, and expected, don't assume everyone
will do it. Always make allowances in your plans, your
scripts,
and your procedures for your end users to do the illogical, unexpected,
and "wrong thing at the wrong time". Build in the safeguards
you
can to prevent as many problems as you reasonably can, but realize that
no matter how hard you try, there's likely to be someone who does
something you didn't plan for.
