Walking back and forth in his office at the Medina Central School District administration building, Brian Richards, IT director for the district, discussed the drastic ways that server management had changed in a relatively brief period of time. Richards’ five years with the district have coincided with server virtualization catching on like wildfire. The number of physical servers the district uses has been pared down from 25 when he first arrived to five. But the number of IT staff, and the level of technical acumen the position demands, has increased.
“Now you need to know more about how [servers] work because you’re putting your eggs in one basket – or five baskets,” Richards said.
It wasn’t so long ago that the day in the life of a server administrator allowed for a lot of high-tech improvisation. Server rooms often consisted of repurposed closets overflowing with Ethernet cables, and it wasn’t uncommon for someone working on a server to slot in a random RAM replacement or other card, without having a full command of the hardware’s specifications, to keep the hardware going.
But things are different now. You still have be fast on your feet, but there’s less elbow grease, and more expertise, that goes into managing a server. And with uptime non-negotiable whether it’s in the private or public sector, it’s critical for in-house server staff to have a handle on managing the server – and often managing a whole lot more.
When Richards sought out three new IT staff for his department, some of the criteria on which he evaluated them would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Then, server virtualization was in its infancy, and generally greeted with skepticism. Now managing it is a must-have skill. But though it’s a critical skill for a server manager to have, that’s not the only thing an employer looks for.
“We looked for people [who] understood the whole lifecycle of IT,” Richards said. “Not just ‘Here’s a desktop or a server, see you later.’ We wanted them to know: What’s the replacement cycle? How are you going to patch this? How are you going to plan for downtime? How are you going to plan for outages if X piece of hardware fails? What is it, why did it fail, what went wrong, how are you going to mitigate that, how are you going to fix that, who are you going to contact, what’s your game plan behind all these things?”
And topping the list for Richards’ search was network security. As in any enterprise, IT security is paramount in a school district – but it also poses its own unique challenges for both those handling the day-to-day and those farther up in the IT chain. Protecting students from outside threats, maintaining compliance and, of course, keeping wandering students on the straight and narrow with effectively enforced IT policies, are all a necessary part of the job.
Richards successfully filled those roles with IT pros who are up to the task, and who will continue to build their skills alongside the rapid evolution of server technology – an evolution affecting IT pros in all walks of the industry.
From a recently-remodeled room that acts as the distribution point for Fayetteville Technical Community College’s network, Tenette Prevatte, department chair, manages a server running virtual machines, which she in turn uses to facilitate a range of hands-on workshops for her students. This summer she is the sole instructor for the department’s one Linux class. During the school year, she is joined by at least ten faculty members. Prevatte, like Richards, has seen big changes in server setups over the last couple of years – the carefully laid Ethernet cables connecting machines throughout the room are but one.
“When I started doing this 19 years ago everything was hardware,” Prevatte said. “I had a compact server that weighed about 200 pounds that you had to lift with a hand truck. Motherboards have changed, the graphics adapters have changed – everything has changed as far as hardware. Everything has gotten smaller and more customized for the hardware that you’re working on.”
In her hands-on management of the server, Prevatte does everything from scheduling sessions for her students to finding and implementing critical security patches and making sure the OS is updated. Thanks to virtualization, there’s far less hardware to manage than would have been necessary even a few years ago. But that doesn’t mean things are simple. Understanding virtual machines, knowing where to go for product-specific answers and working with extreme precision are more important than ever.
As both Richards and Prevatte watch servers and the jobs surrounding them evolve, they’re also helping the IT community at large meet the challenges. They both serve as subject matter experts (SMEs) for the CompTIA Server+ certification, bringing their knowledge and experience from the field to help establish the vendor-neutral standards for working on servers directly, supporting them and working on the networks built around them.
Richards pointed out that in any workplace with an in-house server, keeping it up and running is one of the most important tasks going on behind the scenes.
“If your desktop goes down, you can get around that in a number of ways these days,” Richards said. “You’ve got tablets and smartphones and virtual desktops and you can jump on somebody else’s laptop no problem. If a server goes down you’ve got people screaming at you. You’ve got people wanting their data back up or their email back up or whatever they’re working on that went down. Server outages are much bigger than a desktop outage or an access point outage.”
With the CompTIA Server+ exam testing not just on the hard technical skills of virtualization, hardware and security, but also on the softer yet vital elements of server administration, like vendor relationship management, the certification is keeping up with the rapidly changing face of the server administrator’s workday.
Prevatte said, “Server+ creates a well-rounded body of knowledge for people entering the field.”
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Matthew Stern is a freelance writer based in Chicago who covers information technology, retail and various other topics and industries.
