Infrastructure management as cooperative work: implications for systems design
GROUP '97 Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work: the integration challenge
System administrators are users, too: designing workspaces for managing internet-scale systems
CHI '03 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Recovery Oriented Computing (ROC): Motivation, Definition, Techniques,
Recovery Oriented Computing (ROC): Motivation, Definition, Techniques,
Researching system administration
Researching system administration
Field studies of computer system administrators: analysis of system management tools and practices
CSCW '04 Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
A1: end-user programming for web-based system administration
Proceedings of the 18th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
A1: spreadsheet-based scripting for developing web tools
LISA '05 Proceedings of the 19th conference on Large Installation System Administration Conference - Volume 19
The challenges of using an intrusion detection system: is it worth the effort?
Proceedings of the 4th symposium on Usable privacy and security
Work practices of system administrators: implications for tool design
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology
Guidelines for designing IT security management tools
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology
IT-management software deployment: field findings and design guidelines
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology
LISA'08 Proceedings of the 22nd conference on Large installation system administration conference
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
Generations in the Workplace: An Exploratory Study with Administrative Assistants
UAHCI '09 Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Part III: Applications and Services
Proceedings of the Symposium on Human Interface 2009 on ConferenceUniversal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Part I: Held as Part of HCI International 2009
System administrators as broker technicians
Proceedings of the Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for the Management of Information Technology
An intelligent contextual support system for intrusion detection tasks
Proceedings of the Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for the Management of Information Technology
Storage administration: field findings and software design guidelines
Proceedings of the Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for the Management of Information Technology
Design and evaluation guidelines for mental health technologies
Interacting with Computers
A service delivery platform for server management services
IBM Journal of Research and Development
A survey of system configuration tools
LISA'10 Proceedings of the 24th international conference on Large installation system administration
Heuristics for evaluating IT security management tools
Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security
An Awareness Raising System to Support Cross-department Coordination in Matrix Organizations
Proceedings of the X Brazilian Symposium in Collaborative Systems
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
Information Technology system administrators (sysadmins) perform the crucial and never-ending work of maintaining the technical infrastructure on which our society depends. Computer systems grow more complex every year, however, and the cost of administration is an ever increasing fraction of total system cost - IT systems are growing harder to manage. To better understand this problem, we undertook a series of field studies of system administration work over the past four years, visiting a variety of enterprise and large university sites. One of our most compelling observations was how often the tools used by system administrators were not well aligned with their work practices. We believe that this misalignment was the result of administration tools designed without a complete understanding of the full context of administration work. To promote the design of better tools, this paper describes system administration work in more detail based on examples from our field studies, outlines the dimensions along which enterprise sysadmins differ significantly from other computer users, and provides a set of guidelines for tools to better support how administrators actually work.