Practice of Cloud System Administration
by Thomas Limoncelli, Strata Chalup, Christina Hogan
80% recommend20% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Focuses on principles rather than specific technologies, covering how to design and operate large distributed systems; suited to sysadmins and ops-minded engineers wanting a broader foundation.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…disrespectful. Work together. Show trust and solidarity by carrying a pager alongside the ops guys to say, "Yes, I'm right here with you in case you need me.") Tom Limoncelli somewhat recently put out "The Practice of Cloud System Administration"[0], and I implore that you give it a cover-to-cover read. Even folks who align with the development side of the house will get some benefit from it. Finally, to your point about testing in a non-production…
on “Ask HN: What is your company's on-call rotation like?” ↗Limoncelli's newer book _The Practice of Cloud System Administration_ is awesome. It's really more about how to build distributed systems to performant and operational.
on “Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience” ↗The Practice of System and Network Administration, Tom Limoncelli and Christine Hogan. The Practice of Cloud System Administration: Designing and Operating Large Distributed Systems, Volume 2 -- by the above plus Strata Chalup. You need both.
on “Ask HN: Which books describe modern devops?” ↗I don't have time to write a detailed post, but would a book recommendation work? :) "The Practice of Cloud System Administration: Designing and Operating Large Distributed Systems", coming out next month, provides a good viewpoint on how distributed systems design knowledge is useful to someone in a sysadmin role. (I've read a…
on “Distributed systems theory for the distributed systems engineer” ↗On the topic of learning ops, I want to second my recommendation from another thread for "The Practice of System and Network Administration" and "The Practice of Cloud System Administration" These books focus on principles, rather than specific technologies, and I love them for it. http://everythingsysadmin.com/books.html
on “Ops School – Comprehensive Program to Become an Operations Engineer” ↗These are all systems administration topics, might be worthwhile picking up some of the media from that realm. 'The Practice of Cloud System Administration'[0] by Limmoncelli is a good jumping off point. His works are often very good. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Cloud-System-Administration-...
on “Ask HN: Best resources to understand enterprise networking and security?” ↗…benefitted a lot. I recommend The Practice of System and Network Administration to anyone wanting to learn how to be a systems administrator. If you want to work in web operations, I also recommend The Practice of Cloud System Administration.
on “Ask HN: How do I learn how to become a good sysadmin?” ↗There's also the follow-on book, The Practice of Cloud System Administration, which is focused more on distributed systems. https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Cloud-System-Administration-...
on “Site Reliability Engineering” ↗Good question! The Practice of Cloud System Administration is one that comes to mind, but it's not precisely focused on this topic either. https://the-cloud-book.com/ Edit: thinkmassive mentioned the Art of Scalability, which I'd also recommend.
on “Web Architecture 101” ↗Books will take you pretty far: - UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook - The Practice of System and Network Administration - The Practice of Cloud System Administration - Tannenbaum's textbooks (operating systems / networks) - Readings in Database Systems
on “Ask HN: How to learn more about servers?” ↗This is called The McHenry Technique in the book The Practice of Cloud System Administration by Limoncelli/Chalup/Hogan. That chapter lists many techniques for live upgrades.
on “The pedantic checklist for changing your data model in a web application” ↗The Practice of Cloud System Administration (2015) contained a reference or two to Clos networking topologies and a vague hint that vendors might adopt it eventually. Given the author is a former Googler, I guess we now know why that aside block…
on “A Look inside Google’s Data Center Networks” ↗…for that organization. However I agree that more often than not, it won't work. I didn't have the word-count to go into this (that could be the topic of an entire book... or at least a chapter of The Practice of Cloud System Administration [https://the-cloud-book.com/]). That said, my personal rule of thumb is: 6 is the minimum for an oncall roster; 5 if there is another team doing follow-the-sun coverage. YMMV of course. Tom
on “Split Your Overwhelmed Teams” ↗I’m not sure why the above comment is being downvoted: I was reading The Practice of Cloud System Administration: Designing and Operating Large Distributed Systems, and I came across this quote: Royce’s 1970 paper, which is credited with “inventing” the model, actually identifies it so Royce can criticize it and…
on “Why Scrum is stressing you out” ↗