Chapter 8: Improving Administration Maturation with Automation through Scripting and DevOps

I think that it is safe to say that for most of us in system administration that scripting and automation and where we naturally gravitate towards for thinking of what creates the best opportunities for overall system improvement. This might be treated, and automation is very important, without question, but it is not the end all of system administration either. It is safe to say that the more that we learn to script and automate, the more that we have free time to focus our energies on tasks that only humans can do while also developing a deeper appreciation for what developers do which is always be helpful for those of us in IT.

System automation is an area where it becomes much easier to obtain bragging rights as to what our daily task list looks like. When sitting around having beers at the proverbial system administrators cocktail lounge, we get little satisfaction over telling our compatriots...