The Scarcity Mindsetvs.

The Abundance Mindset

Thomas A. Limoncelli

http://EverythingSysadmin.com

poverty

economics

infinity

The mindset of scarcity

plate of potatoes

The mindset of plenty

a parent’s love

plenty is more common than we are taught

compassionfairness

love

by paying attentionto them or spending time with them

by paying attentionto them or spending time with them

by giving our attentionto them or beingwith them

Potlatch and Open Source

System administration in a world of plenty

• Giving attention

• Showing concern

• Sharing expertise

• Improving the world

• Providing stability

• Ensuring protection

time

scarcity is scarce

scarcity in IT is scarce

Much of how we've defined ourselves as system administrators is based in scarcity.

With so many traditional services becoming commodities, what makes us special?

ScarcityIn college I had a job monitoring the mainframe to prevent people from hogging the CPU.

PlentyEveryone has their own CPU

CPUs

Modern policy: Desktops

ScarcityEvery server is expensive, requiring an OS license, Application license. Power was “free”

PlentyHardware becomes cheaper; F/OSS makes software cheaper; power becomes our main cost

Servers

Modern policy: Green Power a business imperative

Scarcity1990 - $700 / 70meg

PlentyRAID

“Free” web-drives

Storage

Modern policy: Storage as a community resource

Scarcity10M shared segments.

Manage users:port ratio

Routers slow and costly.

PlentyGigE to desktop, switched.

Route at “wire speeds”

LANs

Modern policy: Dedicated port per user.

ScarcityDon’t have time to be nice.

PlentyHire friendly people.

Helpdesks

...and...

Gatekeepers

Gatekeepers: Those in control of the flow of information.

Newspaper publishers and editors, Television producers, Encyclopedea editors,

Music Executives,etc.

ScarcityTV channels

News media

Music executives

PlentyYouTube.com

Blogs

cdbaby.com

Gatekeepers made obsolete by the internet

We want curators,not gatekeepers

Choice

The product space is bigger than the

gatekeepers want you to know.

Gatekeepers are everywhere

Gatekeeper:

• Proprietary Software Vendors

“we’ll say what features are worth adding”

• Manufacturers

“We’ll say what products are worth making”

Anti-Gatekeepers:

• Free/Open Source

“we’ll contribute to meet our needs”

• Fabs

“3D Printers”, Fabricators, Rapid Prototypers

Gatekeepers fear losing their power

IT departments are gatekeepers

Fallacies Reality

• We pick the apps because we know more than our users

• IT can provide everything the user needs

• We control everything for safety and security

• Remote access as our VPN permits

• Users are sophisticated, talk with peers

• Users work around us more than we think

• Users get their job done whether or not it is “safe”

• People work around our limits; take data home

No longer sole arbitrator

The IT department doesn’t choose your

search engine

Cloud Computing

A fancy name for a “hosted application”

• Salesforce.com

• Google Apps

• Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail

mashups

programmableweb.com lists 600+ APIs and

2700+ mashups

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo! are

now ecosystems

• Google Apps Engine• Amazon S3 and EC2• Facebook APIs

Friction-Free Scaling

Scale by clicking the mouse

Commodities

• Email services

• Document storage and backups

• IM/Chat systems

• Hardware Inventory, Distribution & Repair

• Cloud system administration

• Legacy apps (non-cloud apps)

• Desktop life-cycle management

Much of how we've defined ourselves as system administrators is based in scarcity.

With so many traditional services becoming commodities, what makes us special?

In a world of plenty, how do system

administrators add value?

What?and

How?

What?and

How?

System administration in a world of plenty

• Giving attention

• Showing concern

• Sharing expertise

• Improving the world

• Providing stability

• Ensuring protection

Giving our attention(helpdesks)

Showing Concern(Monitoring & SLAs)

Sharing Expertise(IT Coordinator)

Improve the world(Change Management)

Provide Stability(Release engineering)

Ensuring Protection(Security & Compliance)

What?and

How?

trustsafety

stability

Trust

• Transparency is...

• information is available about what we do

• openly shared data - no secrets

• Tip: written policies, written procedures

• consistency across locations and users

• correctness of work, even when delegated

• demystifies our profession

Safety• People feel safe when...

• they have control and have given consent

• Tips:

• Expectations & norms set via AUPs and SLAs

• Needs heard and understood

• Respect for each other and rules

Stability

• No surprises!

• Tips:

• Prevention and planning, less firefighting

• Data-driven decisions

• Incremental improvement (not stasis nor chaos)

Homework

1. Written policies (w/management sign-off) for:

• SLA and AUP

• Scope of support (who, what, where, when)

• How users should get help

• What constitutes an “emergency”2. Help request / ticket system + “next budget” wiki3. Checklists for procedures (wiki)4. Well-defined project priorities5. Monitor utilization - no surprise scarcity

plenty is more common than we are taught

compassionfairness

love

trustsafety

stability

www.EverythingSysadmin.com

∞

=

∞

Thank you

(backup slides)

1. Written policies (w/management sign-off) for:

• SLA and AUP

• Scope of support (who, what, where, when)

• How users should get help

• What constitutes an “emergency”2. Help request / ticket system + “next budget” queue3. Checklists for procedures (wiki)4. Well-defined project priorities5. Monitor utilization - no surprise scarcity

Homework

System administration in a world of plenty

• Giving attention

• Showing concern

• Sharing expertise

• Improving the world

• Providing stability

• Ensuring protection

www.EverythingSysadmin.com

www.EverythingSysadmin.com