In our shop all the storage admins are old sysadmins
And for the most part we are better than a lot of our current sysadmins at being sysadmins. We are but 4 guys managing 10Pb of block and NAS. Sure automation and self provisioning are something everyone's getting excited about but like some of the other posters have said someone has to 'watch the box.' They systems are all just big servers and they don't take care of themselves all the time. I've been doing this for over 10 years and I've never met the PHD storage admin. We're just sysadmins (none with a CS degree mind you, like almost the entire infrastructure team.) Automation is great but the Sysadmin who has hundreds of virtual servers and doesn't know much about the underlying infrastructure of those VM's is kind of a problem isn't it? There's already a gigantic problem with app and dev people who don't know the first thing about their dependencies so they can't trouble shoot anything. There has to be a balance between automation and understanding what you're working with and what it can and can't do.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
