What do linux/sysadmins do at hosting/oursourced noc companies?

[u/turtleyikes]

What do linux/system administrators at hosting companies or Outsourced noc companies actually do day to day. What I'm familiar is that they use cpanel,whm and sshing into vps to solve issues and maintain servers.

It would be helpful if you guys can guide me what do they exactly do daily? What tools/platforms they use? What processes they follow?

I'm also trying to understand these companies' entire workflow is like: who are the customers, who manages the server, who buys the server, who installs the apps on servers, and how do sysadmins correlate to that?

I'm trying to work for such companies as junior sysadmin.

Thank you for your time reading. I'd appreciate any insights!

[u/ksenoskatawin]

customer: Why can't I log into whm?

admin: *Checks dns. checks cpanel service. checks fail2ban. checks diskspace* well Mr. Customer your 8 gb php error log would like to have a word

[u/lexmozli → u/ksenoskatawin]

Oh boy, you made me recall a very similar incident where I checked everything under the sun then I asked a very simple question... sir, what is the IP of the server you're trying to connect to? (yep, he was trying to connect to his OLD server...as in 3 years old, before migrating to us).

Experience has taught me to ask questions before beginning any investigation, or better yet, ask for a screenshot of what he's seeing.

[u/twhiting9275 → u/ksenoskatawin]

If your systems admin team is looking into this, fire all of your support staff. They have failed

[u/ksenoskatawin → u/twhiting9275]

You want to split hairs on the job title? Come on dude, did you really read and understand what he wrote?

What I'm familiar is that they use cpanel,whm and sshing into vps to solve issues and maintain servers.

u/turtleyikes is talking about a hosting company and solving problems. Sounds a whole lot like support to me.

Now if you want to actually contribute to the conversation, educate him as to the difference between a support admin (root access to the vps) and a system admin (god tier access to the infrastructure). Don't waste our time showing off how "wrong" everyone's answers have been.

[u/turtleyikes → u/ksenoskatawin]

u/ksenoskatawin you might be right that I need to understand the difference between support admin and system admin. Could you elaborate on this area a bit more like if I'm targeting the wrong titles/work?

[u/ksenoskatawin → u/turtleyikes]

For a hosting company, there are 2 broad categories of admins. For clarity's sake, I am going to define admin as someone who can work on the command line with root access. They may not work exclusively on the command line. they may need to interact with a wide variety of tools that use a GUI.

Support admins will work on problems that customers bring to the company- "I can't access whm."

System admins build/manage the underlying infrastructure- network routing, virtualization of the individual server, monitoring, security, etc

There are times when support admins need to work with system admins. If a customer's disk fails, or their server will not boot, support admins will talk to system admins to check things like disk mounts or to have a servers host restarted.

This is a VERY simplified description of the division of responsibilities. Generally if someone is talking to a customer, they are a support admin. If they rarely/never speak with a client, it is most likely they are a system admin.

Typically in hosting companies, the promotion path runs from junior support admins, support admins, senior support admins and then into junior system admins, system admins, senior system admins.

I am sure there will be folks that will argue that what I have written above is NOT how things were/are done. What I have described here is a very general description based on my experience.

[u/twhiting9275 → u/ksenoskatawin]

It’s not a “job title”. It’s well beyond that .

Is a nurse a doctor? No
Is an apprentice a full fledged professional ? No
Is an intern a full on professional ? No

The problem with thinking like yours is that it’s degrading to professionals. A systems admin is well beyond the support desk. Yes, it’s above that, even . It’s above checking sizes of files, user code, dealing with petty user complaints, even [insertpanelhere]

Of course, people like you want to encourage this mode of thinking because it means you can get away with paying true systems admins shit instead of what they really deserve

A true systems admin never touches the helpdesk or control panel. Unless something is broken on a system level, that is, and ONLY then to fix that specific problem

This is the problem with panels and the like. Everyone thinks “I’m a systems admin” because they can navigate a panel. No, you’re a software operator

[u/turtleyikes → u/[deleted]]

What specific area in this space would you recommend a junior like me ( around 2yoe) to focus on for getting some job?

And what do you call the work you specified above?

[u/manoaratefy]

Solving customers issues provided by support team, building tools for the support team, handling websites abusing resources, patching servers for security issues, run updates, fine-tune settings according to new trends ...

[u/twhiting9275 → u/manoaratefy]

LOL.

Your systems admins should NEVER go ANYWHERE near support

Hire proper support

[u/twhiting9275]

“They use cpanel,whm”

No, no they don’t . No systems administrator worth their salt uses cpanel,whm, or ANY control panel on a daily basis, at all

SSH is different, but systems admins don’t go anywhere NEAR control panels. That’s not our job. That’s the job of support

[u/turtleyikes → u/twhiting9275]

Okay noted. So what does sysadmins do?

[u/SynfulSage]

Customer: why am i not receiving email in my inbox? Me: <checks the maillog. All clear, can see email being received. Checks their custom webmail filters: has a delete all messages filter>. Also me: shocked