SAGE: The System Administrators Guild

For almost a decade,SAGE has served the needs of system administrators around the world.^[1] One of SAGE's main goals is the increase of visibility and recognition of system administration as a profession. To this end, SAGE has published as series of short topics handbooks. All of them are excellent. A good one to start with is Job Descriptions for System Administrators (Revised and Expanded Edition), edited by Tina Darmohray. This work provides detailed job descriptions for system administration positions at various levels. As such, it is very useful for evaluating both your skills and your present position in light of general practices.

^[1] Thanks to Rob Kolstad, SAGE's Executive Director, for most of the descriptive text in the SAGE section.

Along the same lines, SAGE committees are currently working on the System Administration Book of Knowledge, which includes a listing of all the tasks a system administrator might encounter (but not how to do them), and they are also working on a university curriculum for new system administrators. Complementing these is a vendor-neutral certification program developed as a "career certification" instead of the usual "product certification."

Organized as a special technical group ofUSENIX, SAGE's thousands of members share information, technical tips, and white papers on SAGE's website. Many of SAGE's services are available for no charge at the SAGE portal http://www.sage.org. They include:

SAGEwire

An online discussion forum with daily updates of news for and about system administration.

SAGEweb

Items of long-term interest, including SAGE's activities, member services, and organizational news.

SAGEnews

An email periodical with just the right amount of summarization on system administration news.

SAGE co-sponsors many conferences, including the popularLISA conference for system administrators. LISA, the Large Installation System Administration conference, is excellent and very relevant to all system administrators, regardless of the size of their site. Held annually, it is preceded by three days of optional, in-depth tutorials on various system administration topics. The conference itself also runs three days and includes a variety of technical sessions including both well-known speakers and ordinary system administrators sharing their experience and social activities. Overall, the conference is both informative and a lot of fun. For more information about LISA, see http://www.usenix.org/events/.

All system administrators are welcome at SAGE. Check us out and see what SAGE has to offer you.