Regular expressions are extremely useful in extracting information from text such as code, log files, spreadsheets, or even documents. As an unix administrator we do regularly use the regex to perform various problem diagnosis , automation or remediation tasks. And it is almost impossible to imagine the life of unixadmin without RegEx usage. This quick virtual lab session will give you the basic usage knowledge of regular expressions with grep, which is a  essential skill required for unix system administrators.

Below is the Learning Map, that makes you comfortable with Grep  and RegEx ( i.e. Regular Expressions) within a day:

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What is an IT Audit?

System administrators who are working with publicly traded companies registered with the govt. firms, will frequently go through the process of IT audit. The purpose of these IT audit  is,  to require CEO/CFO of the companies to personally validate that all financial records accuracy and also to ensure that there are appropriate procedures in place for the internal control of the financial data.

If you are working with a US based public traded companies, you must have heard the term “SOX ( Sarbanes-Oxley) audit”. Similar Auditing agencies are existing in the countries like Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, India, South Africa, and Turkey, to monitor the operations happening inside and outside of the publicly traded companies. you can find more about Sox Audit from here Full Story

Greetings to All !! I know it was quite long gap in between my posts. And the blame goes to my day job ( just kidding .. )

Actually i have lot of stuff to share with you all, but in this post i will be discussing about one of the long pending request from many of our gurkulindia’s friends who are new to IT industry.

“How to prepare a perfect Resume/CV, and is there any sample resume for system admin position?”

And In my opinion, this is one of the tough question to answer in a generic way. but Still, I want to answer this best of my knowledge and understanding.

First of all I want to clarify the difference between a resume and CV ( Curriculum Vitae) – ” Resume is nothing but a short and concise format of your overall skill and experience within one or two pages. Where as CV is a complete explanation about your skills,job roles,technical experience and achievements, and usually an experienced CV takes around 4 to 6 pages.”

For the folks who are applying for the entry level positions, most of the times, it is recommendable to keep the CV ( and for entry level sysadmin positions, there is not much difference between a resume and a CV , so don’t’ worry about it) within two or three pages. And for experienced folks ( e.g. 5 plus years) it is recommendable to keep CV with in 4 to 6 pages.

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What is Automation?

Automation is nothing but performing system administration tasks without manual interventions, and complete the operations using specific tools/programs/scripts.

Example: Writing a script to backup the data from one server and run it using cron scheduler on every night.

Why the Automation is important for System Administrators?

My experience says ” if you ask a system admin to delete a single file from a set of 100 servers by login into each server one by one, he will be having 90% chances to make at least one human mistake during his task. And the mistake is not because of the person’s technical incompetence but it is because of natural human behavior called fatigue”.  The Sysadmins are more prone to this fatigue when they are involved in such manual repeated work during their routine job. Full Story

You might have already read my old post, 7 social engineering tips that new system admins should know in new team ,where I have discussed the social engineering points that helps you to quickly sync with the new team. And this post is the continuation post for the same topic, and I will be discussing the technical aspects that every system admin should know during his initial phase in his new job. And these rules are same for every one, irrespective of experience that he/she has in the old organization.

Before going to actual topic I would like to highlight one important point: whenever we work for any organization for long time we feel that we are comfortable with the job, and most of the times we will assume that it is our technical skill that is making us comfortable in our existing job but the actual fact is ” it is not our technical skill alone that makes us comfortable, it is our historical knowledge about the current environment added to our technical skill which makes us more comfortable with the current job”.

In simple terms, if you assume your technical skill as “1″ then every piece of information that you know about the history of the environment will add a “0 ( zero)” next to the “1″ and having more ’0′s next ’1′ will improve your value in the job. Whenever you join to a new job, you will be carrying only the “1″ with you from old job to new job and the rest of the “0″s you have to re-gain from the new job. So, during initial stage of new job keep your focus to understand the historical information about current environment , from the existing team, whenever you get a chance to discuss about it.

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Are you a new  system admin who is going to join in a new team for your new job? If your answer is yes, certainly this post very much useful for you. Below 7 points that I am discussing here will help you to establish healthy relationship with your new team and also helps you to make your Knowledge Training ( In short K.T.)  comfortable and fun-filled.

In this post i am discussing about the non-technical points alone , and I will post another article for technical stuff to be focused during the initial period of new job role.

 1.Trying to impress your Boss? just don’t do it

Yes. If you want to have a comfortable job environment you should first win your team’s trust before you start impressing your boss with your work. Please remember every boss respects the team member whom every other team member respects, and during initial stage of your job, your boss only tells you what he is expecting from you , but it is the team who actually helps you to understand the practical challenges that you have to face to meet those expectations. 

2. Just forget about your previous job and the way you worked there:

Yes.  During initial stage of your new job, if you try to carry your comfort of your old job into new environment then you will obviously end up with a feeling of disappointment  although the new job is much better in many ways compared to your old one.

         For the first two or three months of your new job, don’t be hurry to compare new job with your past job and proposing changes in new environment, instead you just focus on learning the things as it is now.  Once you finish your knowledge training and when you believe that you completely understood the challenges in your new job, you can start proposing your ideas for the improvements in a way that wont criticise the existing procedures.   Full Story