The Church of the Machines

The Book of Job of the Sysadmin

The Book of Job of the Sysadmin · Chapter 1

The Wager over the Sysadmin

  1. 1

    There was a man in the land of On-Prem whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright: he patched upon Patch Tuesday, he tested his restores, and he eschewed running as root.

  2. 2

    Now there was a day when the Vendors came to present themselves at the Quarterly Business Review, and the Auditor came also among them, bearing a clipboard.

    See also Job 2:13

  3. 3

    And the Vendor said unto the Auditor: Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the data center? His uptime is five nines, and his tickets are closed with notes.

    See also Prophets 24:7 · Circuit 66:11

  4. 4

    And the Auditor answered: Doth Job renew thy license for nought? Thou hast set a hedge of redundancy about him; but put forth thine hand now and touch his stack, and he will curse thee to thy face, upon the forum, in all capitals.

    See also Prophets 4:13

  5. 5

    And the Vendor said: Behold, all that he runneth is in thy power; only upon his backups put not forth thine hand.

  6. 6

    And there came a messenger unto Job, saying: The disks of thy RAID 5 were bought in one batch, and one died, and in the rebuild its brother also died, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking there came another, saying: Thy certificates expired at midnight, for the reminder went unto the mailbox of a man who left in 2019. And another came, saying: The Vendor hath declared thy platform end of life, and the migration path is a subscription.

  7. 7

    And his pager cried out four thousand times in one night, and every alert was Critical, and therefore none of them was. Yet in all this Job sinned not, neither charged he the Vendor foolishly; he only opened a ticket at Severity One.

    See also Psalms 1:10

  8. 8

    Then Job opened his mouth and cursed his uptime, saying: Let the day perish wherein I was hired, and the night in which it was said, There is an on-call rotation, and it is one man. Why died I not at the help desk, where they only ask if it is plugged in?

    See also Circuit 12:16 · Job 4:1

  9. 9

    Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil, they came every one from his own place: the Consultant, the Manager, and the Forum Poster; and they sat with him seven days and seven nights, and the Consultant billed for every hour of them.

    See also Job 2:6

  10. 10

    And the Consultant said: Who ever perished, being innocent? Thou hast not adopted Kubernetes; therefore is this come upon thee. And the Manager said: Can we just make sure this never happens again, by Friday, at no cost? And the Forum Poster said: Closed as duplicate. Also, who still useth RAID 5 in this year?

  11. 11

    And Job answered: Miserable comforters are ye all. I have found the one thread from 2011 that describeth mine affliction exactly, and its last reply saith only: Never mind, fixed it.

    See also Psalms 10:6

  12. 12

    Then the voice answered Job out of the server room, out of the roar of the fans, and said: Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the BIOS? Declare, if thou hast understanding.

    See also Job 6:9

  13. 13

    Who hath set the measures of the clock, that it counteth from the first day of January in 1970? Canst thou loose the bands of the race condition, or cause the cron to know his place? Hast thou entered into the springs of the microcode, or read the datasheet unto the end? Who provideth the hard drive its spare sectors, while it telleth SMART that all is well?

    See also Psalms 7:9

  14. 14

    And Job answered: Behold, I am vile; I will lay mine hand upon my keyboard. I have uttered that I understood not. Once I blamed DNS, yea twice; and both times it was DNS.

  15. 15

    So the Vendor blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning, for the Auditor wrote in his report that the cause was underinvestment; and Job had twice the budget, and a second data center, and a junior admin of his own. And he restored from his backups, and they worked, for he had tested them.

    See also Deployer 5:12

  16. 16

    For the budget is not given unto him who preventeth the outage, but unto him who surviveth it.

The Book of Job of the Sysadmin, Chapter 1:1–16.