We are a small team of SysAdmin and DevOps Engineers – Sysadmin Workshop. We operate servers. We want our servers to function well, our clients to be satisfied with the results and we want us to enjoy the process.
We strive to ensure that the company gathered cool system administrators. We like when we have a lot of clients and they have a lot of servers. And all this works successfully thanks to our support. It is a pleasure for us to be creative and find elegant and automated solutions for non-trivial tasks. We like to accumulate knowledge and make difficult things simple.
We feel comfortable when necessary data could be quickly found in the backups and monitoring reveals problems in time. When the security is safe. We feel confident when servers, users, access rules and software are clearly accounted. When procedures and order are followed, when information is laid out on its place. When at any time we can give the client the answer to the weirdest question about its infrastructure. When servers are being setup quickly and degrade slowly.
We are a technology focused company. We practice the Unix philosophy and prefer to work with Ubuntu servers. We value rationality, efficiency and simplicity in the choice of solutions. We prefer:
- Unified typical operations, it is easier with them.
- DevOps and IaC even for the smallest clients.
- Open Source. Get the best and free from the public. Bind it with your own work together.
We constantly develop the technologies and practices we are using and eventually came to the following rule set:
- Describe the infrastructure formally. This will ensure repeatability, minimize configuration drift, document everything and allow recovery from disaster.
- Structure all information you could for further usage in automation.
- Minimize the number of manual operations. It is better to spend more time on automation than to repeat monotonously. There will be fewer errors due to the human factor, tasks will be done faster, and less resources will be needed as a result.
- Constantly accumulate and develop code in configuration management systems, scripts and other utilities.
- Constantly describe and improve processes – instructions according to which people act.
- Be able to do it fast in order to quickly expand the list of typical tasks for the needs of clients.
- Create your own SaaS solution rather than operate hourly.