[nycbug-talk] Hypothetical: the end of the sysadmin/systems engineer/DBA?

[Andy Kosela]

Siobhan Lynch <slynch2112 at me.com> wrote:

> Matt Juszczak wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> > 
> > So I've been thinking - more and more companies (Amazon, Rackspace,
> > Terremark, etc.) are moving to cloud technologies.  Some are even moving
> > to cloud technologies combined with dedicated server infrastructure. 
> > But for the most part, it does seem a lot easier to "spin up" a few
> > ready to go instances (like amazon EC2) and launch a production web
> > application.
> > 
> > There's still a lot to do: MySQL is still heavily used, and requires a
> > lot of tuning once performance needs grow.  However, databases like
> > MongoDB, SimpleDB, etc. are quickly gaining market share.
> > 
> > So I wonder: will there be a time when those who have an idea simply
> > spin up some ready to go cloud servers, point and click the necessary
> > security they'd like and setup they'd like, and run with it?  At that
> > point, would the only positions remaining be developers/programmers?
> > 
> > Just my thought for the day.
>
>
> There will always be those applications that the cloud isn;t apprpriate
> for - for example, what my company does now (email migration) - we found
> that the cloud could not be as reliable and scalable as doing i
> ourselves (costwise).
>
> So I think that for some, yes, but I don;t think sysadmins (especially
> good ones) will be out of jobs.

Yes, exactly.  I can't quite imagine large corporations not having their
own server infrastructure.  Trust me -- there will always be a job for a
sysadmin :)  Plus remember that some data can't be outsourced for some
specific reason -- imagine military, defence or banking industry.

--
Andy Kosela
akosela at andykosela.com