The Practice of System and Network Administration
by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christina J. Hogan, Strata R. Chalup · first published 2016
67% recommend33% neutral
Why HN recommends it
OS-agnostic overview of sysadmin practice that focuses on principles over specific tools, including hiring, negotiation and DevOps-era approaches. Suits new sysadmins and ops people who want the big picture.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…improve their backend systems. Tom Limoncelli, who used to work at Google as a Site reliability engineer (SRE), now works at Stack Exchange [1]. He pretty much wrote the bible for sysadmins entitle "The Practice of System and Network Administration" [2]. I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing more posts like this! [1] http://everythingsysadmin.com/2013/09/the-team-im-on-at-stac... [2] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321492668/tomontime-20
on “Homegrown DevOps Tools at Stack Exchange” ↗Having a great Ops staff also helps ;) Of note is Thomas Limoncelli who wrote "The Practice of System and Network Administration" [1] and "Time Management for System Administrators" [2] works for Stack Exchange (formerly at Google). The Practice of System and Network Administration is basically the bible for most sysadmins, myself…
on “The architecture of Stack Overflow [video]” ↗When I was getting into ops 10 years ago the book "The Practice of System and Network Administration" by Thomas Limoncelli was a great overview (very high level and not specific) that we all read. The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim is kind of a more modern uptake on it, but both can be read easily by people…
on “Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience” ↗I'm amazed nobody has mentioned the "Practice of System and Network Administration" book by Limoncelli and Hogan. Highly recommended. http://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration...
on “Sysadmin mistakes start-ups make” ↗Written by Tom Limoncelli. He and Christina Hogan has also written "The Practice of System and Network Administration" which deals with everything else schools didn't tell you about Systems Administration including chapters on hiring/firing, negotiations from both sides of the table and more ;-)
on “Time Management at Khan Academy” ↗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 haven't read it, but also heard good things about "The Practice of System and Network Administration", by the same author: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Practice-System-Network-Administrat...
on “Ask HN: Best resources to understand enterprise networking and security?” ↗"The practice of System and Network administration" by Tom Limoncelli and Christine Hogan[1] was, together with "Principles of Network and Systems Administration" by Mark Burgess have probably been the books that influenced my approach to sysadmin the…
on “Replacing a $3000/mo Heroku bill with a $55/mo server” ↗Yes there is a book: The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition. This is the best Operations book I've ever bought. Worth every penny.
on “Let's Stop Talking About "Backups"” ↗For programming, I like "The Productive Programmer" http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596519544 And for Sysadmin, it would be hard to beat "The Practice of System and Network Administration" http://everythingsysadmin.com/
on “Ask HN: Are there any good self development/hacking books out there” ↗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” ↗As a sysadmin who wishes he'd discovered this book earlier, I have no problem with recommending "The Practice of System and Network Administration" as a great resource: http://everythingsysadmin.com/aboutbook.html It's definitely an OS-agnostic book, so if you're looking for "how do we do task/process/design A with OS B?", it's not the right fit.…
on “Ask HN: book recommendations for linux server admin?” ↗…aren't familiar with the way Unix & Linux work at a low level. It's the first book I toss at new sysadmins and devs who need to learn about Unix, even before "Essential System Administration" or "The Practice of System and Network Administration". The latter two are good for why you should do things, but ULSAH tells you what, where, and how and explains the different methods and tradeoffs. I haven't picked it up in a year or two, but I keep…
on “Evi Nemeth, retired Boulder computer professor, missing at sea near New Zealand” ↗Yes. I've read all three of those and 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?” ↗…book format bores me to no end. Even worse, it wastes my time. I bought your book, please don't waste 10% of your page count in selling me the book. I think notable exceptions to this are found in 'The Practice of System and Network Administration' and 'Time Management for System Administrators.' Fiction, I can read at times. For the last book I read, 'The Mote in God's Eye', I read the first four chapters or so, then put it off for 5 months,…
on “Why can’t we read anymore?” ↗