It’s July 1, and at OpenDNS that means opening day for SysAdmin Appreciation Month. If you recall last year we made a big decision: SysAdmin Appreciation Day, which is July 25, is not enough. We need an entire month to show our SysAdmin love.
This year we’re doing the SysAdmin Awards a bit differently. There are four categories, in addition to the highest honor, SysAdmin of the Year 2008. The SysAdmin of the Year 2008 will be selected from the submissions to the four categories.
Nominate yourself, or nominate a peer. If you’re reading this, and you aren’t a SysAdmin, I can guarantee you benefit from a SysAdmin, so take a moment to recognize him or her. This is your chance to acknowledge the SysAdmin who keeps your Internets running.
Rules for nominations are simple. Send an e-mail to awards at opendns.com, indicate which category you’re nominating for in the subject line and tell us why your nominee deserves glory. Judging will be done by OpenDNS CEO David Ulevitch (a former SysAdmin himself) and the all-star operations team of George Patterson, Bill Fumerola and Jesse Davidson. The deadline for submissions is midnight on July 22, the night before the OpenDNS SysAdmin Appreciation Party in San Francisco. The real prize is the sheer honor that comes with being selected, but winners will also receive a $50 American Express gift card and be announced right here on this blog. The 2008 SysAdmin of the Year will get $200, a winner’s package of OpenDNS clothing and schwag and a spotlight on our Web site. This is the real deal.
So without further ado, your 2008 OpenDNS SysAdmin Awards categories are:
Best Disaster Response Award
A hurricane, a fire, an earthquake. A datacenter meltdown. Something that would have caused business operations to shut down completely, if it weren’t for this SysAdmin. Like a knight in shining armor, this SysAdmin managed to keep the network up and running.
Unbelievable Uptime Award
SysAdmins take pride in total uptime and this SysAdmin’s router has been up for years. Heck, it’s been up so long he/she might not even remember where it is. Wow the judges with a number of straight days of uptime.
Shoestring Budget Award
This SysAdmin works wonders with a seriously tight budget. Tell us about the SysAdmin with the craziest buildout done on the cheap. We need details for this submission – tell the judges specs, total cost and what kind of awesomeness it powers.
Flying Solo Award
Even with a team of talented operators, SysAdmin’ing is not easy work. But when flying solo it can be downright heroic. Regale us with a (true) story of the heroic sysadmin who saved the world (or did something awesome).
That’s it SysAdmins. Good luck.
Alex Rybalov
Cisco IOS Software, RSP Software (RSP-JK9O3SV-M), Version 12.4(3a), RELEASE SOFT
WARE (fc2)
Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport
Copyright (c) 1986-2005 by Cisco Systems, Inc.
Compiled Fri 30-Sep-05 05:57 by hqluong
ROM: System Bootstrap, Version 12.0(10r)S1, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)
HRouter01 uptime is 2 years, 4 weeks, 3 days, 15 hours, 7 minutes
System returned to ROM by reload at 02:30:54 AST Thu Nov 17 2005
System restarted at 08:41:57 ADT Fri Jun 9 2006
System image file is “disk0:rsp-jk9o3sv-mz.124-3a.bin”
Last reload reason: Unknown reason
posted on July 9th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Stefan Schmidt
Erm Alex,
so this is a Switch Route Processor ok, but does it even do forwarding? I’m failing to see why this uptime should be anything special.
posted on July 13th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Don Peer
I’d like to nominate our SysAdmin, Dan Clements, for the flying solo award. We’re a small company with a huge customer base that the owners have grown and cared for over the years. As the computer business has tapered off over the years our staff has been slowly reduced in kind. We now have two “hardware techs” and one “network tech”. Needless to say, our customers love Dan and rely on him daily.
Dan is our NOS guru and handles catastrophes with aplomb. This was never more apparent than when one of our own servers went down. While others worried about how fast we could order and receive another server, install the OS and restore our backup, Dan was strangely quiet. He stood, nearly motionless in the server room as if not aware of the gravity of the situation. Then, after tracing a few wires, he went back to his desk and returned moments later.
Dan told the owners that he could restore the critical data from our online backup to the other server and get us going until the new server arrives. Silly me, I’d been thinking tape (and all that goes along with it) while Dan had been prepared for this day with redundancy!
posted on July 15th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Christopher Neill
I’m nominating Fumerola because he wrote IPFW. Winsome.
posted on July 18th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
César Solis
I will like to nominate my favorite syadmin, Mr Dx, from http://www.kiace.com.ar / http://www.dxzone.com.ar
His power skills can resolve every problem and convert it in dynamic open source magic, with a sarcasm touch
One of this are the minimal expression call “bien eh”, in english “good work, lol”
long live celeron
posted on July 20th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Daniel Parraz
I would like to nominate System Administrator of Sphere.com, Mike Garfias. Mike has been an awesome mentor for the last 7 years(since the Fatcow.com days), and it seems as though I haven’t given enough thanks, so here it is!
Thanks for the years of knowledge that you have so willingly passed on to me, and here’s to many more years of ‘skill transfer’, as we both gain experience in varied environments, and share.
Thanks Mike!
posted on July 21st, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Andy Neutatz
hello,
one of my 2210-IBM-routers shows the following:
Last Reload: 269 weeks, 4 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes ago
Last Restart: 156 weeks, 4 days, 22 hours, 22 minutes ago
good old machines
posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 12:13 am
Tomorrow is SysAdminDay - Rod Trent at myITforum.com
[...] don’t forget The 2008 OpenDNS SysAdmin Awards Published Thursday, July 24, 2008 11:09 AM by rodtrent Filed under: [...]
posted on July 24th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Riaan Nolan
Would just like to say to all the System Administrators, Happy Friday, Happy Payday AND Happy Sys Admin Day!
Cape Town Rules
posted on July 24th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Anonymous
Sorry, I was too busy being a sysadmin to nominate myself.
posted on July 24th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Andy Neutatz
hello,
I was too late, I know.
but I will NOT reboot the machine until july 24 2009
happy sysadminday @ll
posted on July 24th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Hojin Park
I also would like to thank all the system administrators for their great effort and have good friday!
AI SupportCenter rules
posted on July 24th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Anthony
Debian Server:
killer:~# uptime
07:14:53 up 594 days, 1:13, 1 user, load average: 0.09, 0.05, 0.01
killer:~#
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 4:16 am
Alex Rybalov
Stefan, this router doing a lot of routing (up to 450Mbit of web traffic at the peak time so far), including all web traffic to http://www.sysadminday.com web site.
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 4:47 am
Marcus Petz
Happy Sys Admin Day @all
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Wim Heitinga
I pruodlie noominaat Joris von Loghauzen of die Netderlands! Hie deuserves mutch repsect!!
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 5:41 am
E
I’d like to submit Taurus Balrog of Opennms for making the lives of SysAdmin’s all around the world a bit easier!
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Diamante
July 25th, 2008 (last friday of July), System Administrator Day; i heard for the first time the fire alarm in the computers room.
Like Droopy in its worsts adventures, I saw sylvain Paillares (Our System Administrator) managing the fire with a….screwdriver.
It’s why I think it’s very important to nominate our SysAdmin, Sylvain Paillares, Best Disaster Response Award.
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 6:26 am
rumbi
Wow
we sysadmins rock the world
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 7:24 am
emma
i would like to say that the best sys admin i know is haytham el khouja … he never gives up ^_^
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Spock Naughtingham
I would like to nominate Frank Lucas. He is swell!
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 8:48 am
trallallero trallalla
I deserve a cookie today! I’ll go and get one my self!
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Don Cundy
I would like to nominate Robert Morace. He is always there when you need him.
Thanks Bobby
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Komandoor Srinivas Arun
I appreciate you all on this day for your continual efforts in our field and wish you again a happy sys admin day…..2008.
Arun from India
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Slavko
I want to nominate our Sysadmin Chris G. He ROCKS!!!!
P.S. http://www.yuksrus.com/computers_sysadmin.html this sounds like his usual day. i wonder how he can survive that
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
SysAd
Wish all the SysAdmins a happy Sys Admin day – Check out a site that celebrates sysadmind http://www.server-quest.com
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Justin Bell
Paul McGurn is magical, I’m still relatively new at LogMeIn but I have had a good bit of interaction with Paul. The reason that I say he is magical is because I hear about all the things he is doing and wonder how one person can be doing so many things at once. Not only does he handle the call routing system but he handles the entire case documenting process of our support team. Almost every day we have something updated in our case documenting interface and it seems that we are now switching phone systems, which as far as I know Paul is exclusive handling. Today he even had time to give me and a few other people training. He also has knowledge like whoa! When I ask a question to a Teamlead and they don’t know, who do they go to? Paul. Anyway like I said Paul is magical and I want to nominate him.
posted on July 25th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Dan
No one ever calls and says ” Hey things are working great thanks”. Staff even expects me to fix copiers cuz, hey, there must be zeros and ones in there somewhere. I’d like to nominate my mechanic. He fixes my car so I can get to work.
posted on July 26th, 2008 at 2:57 am
Rein
to bad i couldn’t nominate myself bc of work, totaly forgot about em :p
nominate for the uptime would be:
# cat /proc/uptime
163221480.83 163181411.83
#
calculations to days: (years)
/60/60/24
1889,1375 (5,1757191780821917808219178082192 years)
Achievement of the past 5 years:
created a fully functional KLIPS vpn on a p3 933mhz, connecting about 286 clients around the globe!
posted on July 27th, 2008 at 5:46 am
BitGravity: Blog » Blog Archive » Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day!
[...] http://blog.opendns.com/2008/07/01/announcing-the-2008-opendns-sysadmin-awards http://www.sysadminday.com/ [...]
posted on November 10th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Joseph Kern (josephkern) 's status on Wednesday, 08-Jul-09 17:30:03 UTC - Identi.ca
[...] http://blog.opendns.com/2008/07/01/announcing-the-2008-opendns-sysadmin-awards [...]
posted on July 8th, 2009 at 9:30 am