Making plans for SysAdmin Day 2016

If you’re still looking for ways to show your appreciation to your sysadmins on SysAdmin Day — tomorrow! — here are some suggestions:

• You can take one of your sysadmins out to lunch

• You can bring donuts or other goodies to the office in honor of their special day

• You can send a thank you card around the office and have everyone sign it

• You can write your sysadmins a poem expressing how amazing you think they are.

• You can post on social media using #SysAdminDay — helping to make others aware of the special day

You can also go to https://www.manageengine.com/community/sysadminday/2016.html and check out the posters (Leonardo DiCaprio theme) — maybe hang one in the break room. Or you can send one of the ecards on this site that are designed just for this special day or invite your sysadmins to play the word find game designed just for them.

And even though SysAdmin Day comes only once a year, you can decide to make an effort to be more appreciative and considerate of the time and effort that sysadmins put into their work.

• You can commit to being more understanding when your sysadmins are too busy to get around to your problems
• You can pay more attention to the suggestions they make about how you might avoid running into problems in the first place
• You can start being careful about what links you click on and what other problems you might create by being less than careful in how you work
• You can make more of an effort to use good passwords — and not forget them OR write them down in stupid places
• You can make an effort to supply useful information when you’re reporting a problem

Some of the most dedicated, hardest working people I have ever known have been the sysadmins who worked with or around me. They handle incredible numbers of problems every week, get stuck with lots of after hours tasks (those things that can’t be done while the servers are actively being used), and generally take the demanding pace of their work in stride.

And I’m far from the only one who feels this way. Here are quotes from some companies that have good reason to understand the nature and the complexity of the work that sysadmins do every day.

“We feel the pain of system administrators everyday, but today, specifically, we salute you. You have to deal with frustrated users making all kinds of demands and assuming that no matter what mistake they have made you can fix it. One question sysadmins are constantly plagued with is – ‘Can you restore my deleted/corrupted or infected file?’. Traditionally this is easier said than done, which is why we ensured, this year, that they could actually say ‘yes’ – even if Ransomware has hit.” – Rob Strechay, VP of Product Management, Zerto

“System administrators (sysadmins) never have enough hours in the day, they face constant requests and are under tremendous pressure to keep IT environments up and running 24/7. Keeping mission critical systems online at the best of times is tough, but sysadmins are facing a continuous battle as IT environments evolve and virtual workloads expand. So today we salute you, the unsung heroes of IT, for everything you do. And we promise to continue to partner with you to make storage simple, effective and manageable.” – Chuck Dubuque, Senior Director, Product and Solution Marketing, Tintri

“I don’t know if that name ‘system administrator’ accurately describes the daily routines of these savvy techs who, like backup admins, are only recognized when things go wrong, not for all of the good we don’t notice as they keep things running. These IT Pro’s must be on-time, on-point and online 24x7x365. In my career I’ve done nothing but learn from these guys—so, thank you! vAdmins in particular have become the heroes of business because they have figured out how to accelerate their productivity through the use of the latest technology, and have a level of sophistication that helps them to cope with the speed at which things are changing in the technology market. This change will progressively happen more frequently and working smarter will mean more automation. We see this in VDI, as some admins have automated testing, deployment and troubleshooting as a part of the VDI Lifecycle, so that they can work on enhancing the system and not just fixing it. So, to the end-users that want to leave their broken laptop on their sys-admin’s chair with a note that says ‘fix it’, help us celebrate sys-admin’s day by writing a little more to tell them what’s broken and letting them know how much you love them.” – Blair Parkhill, director of products, Login VSI