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So, nothing here prevents "forgetting how to manage a server" like the article describes. This is literally how automations generally works. You are doing som

So, nothing here prevents "forgetting how to manage a server" like the article describes. This is literally how automations generally works. You are doing something manual. You know how to do it manually. You automate it so you don't have to do it manually. You never do it manually again. Until you have to 10 years later for whatever reason, and suddenly, you forget. And suddenly you have to look things up.

pritambaral 8y ago
Nothing short of regularly repeated practice prevents "forgetting how to manage a server" like the article describes, but that's not the only pitfall TFA refers to. Besides, hiding the how does contribute a tiny little bit towards the forgetting. Not much, but still. So we keep asciinema[1] recordings of the tool performing some of the important tasks, so they can serve as a quick look-up, while the code serves as a full-detailed look-up. ---- 1: https://asciinema.org https://asciinema.org
zrobotics 8y ago
Which is why I think there should still be some manually-managed servers remaining (possibly something like testing). What I didn't see mentioned is that when the automation fails for whatever reason, typically it is a five-alarm situation where minutes count. Having to search through man pages or stack exchange is wasting valuable time during one of the few situations where time is super-critical.
- jasonlotito 8y ago
  > What I didn't see mentioned is that when the automation fails for whatever reason, typically it is a five-alarm situation where minutes count. No, that's not right. When automation fails, it's typically not in five-alarm situations. During five-alarm situations, knowing how to do things manually won't help, because if you could do them manually, the automation would already work.
- pritambaral 8y ago
  > Which is why I think there should still be some manually-managed servers remaining (possibly something like testing). All operations during development are carried out manually, unless already supported by automation (and until, of course). When automating the new operations, a sysadmin must also conduct the steps manually, and also take care of considerations a developer might not have been aware of. > What I didn't see mentioned is that when the automation fails for whatever reason, typically it is a five-alarm situation where minutes count. Generally, this is easily-handled by redundancy, HA, and snapshot rollbacks. Of course anything that's a potential five-alarm situation has redundancy, right? :P

pritambaral 8y ago

Nothing short of regularly repeated practice prevents "forgetting how to manage a server" like the article describes, but that's not the only pitfall TFA refers to. Besides, hiding the how does contribute a tiny little bit towards the forgetting. Not much, but still. So we keep asciinema[1] recordings of the tool performing some of the important tasks, so they can serve as a quick look-up, while the code serves as a full-detailed look-up. ---- 1: https://asciinema.org https://asciinema.org

zrobotics 8y ago

Which is why I think there should still be some manually-managed servers remaining (possibly something like testing). What I didn't see mentioned is that when the automation fails for whatever reason, typically it is a five-alarm situation where minutes count. Having to search through man pages or stack exchange is wasting valuable time during one of the few situations where time is super-critical.

jasonlotito 8y ago
> What I didn't see mentioned is that when the automation fails for whatever reason, typically it is a five-alarm situation where minutes count. No, that's not right. When automation fails, it's typically not in five-alarm situations. During five-alarm situations, knowing how to do things manually won't help, because if you could do them manually, the automation would already work.
pritambaral 8y ago
> Which is why I think there should still be some manually-managed servers remaining (possibly something like testing). All operations during development are carried out manually, unless already supported by automation (and until, of course). When automating the new operations, a sysadmin must also conduct the steps manually, and also take care of considerations a developer might not have been aware of. > What I didn't see mentioned is that when the automation fails for whatever reason, typically it is a five-alarm situation where minutes count. Generally, this is easily-handled by redundancy, HA, and snapshot rollbacks. Of course anything that's a potential five-alarm situation has redundancy, right? :P