Testable System Administration
- Testable System Administration
Models of indeterminism are changing IT management.
MARK BURGESS
The methods of system administration have changed little in the past 20 years. While core IT
technologies have improved in a multitude of ways, for many if not most organizations system
administration is still based on production-line build logistics (aka provisioning) and reactive
incident handling—an industrial-age method using brute-force mechanization to amplify a manual
process. ...
... Experienced system practitioners know deep down that they cannot think of system
administration as a simple process of reversible transactions to be administered by hand; yet it is
easy to see how the belief stems from classical teachings. ... At least half of computer science stems
from the culture of discrete modeling ...To put it quaintly, “systems” are raised in
laboratory captivity under ideal conditions, and released into a wild of diverse and challenging
circumstances. Today, system administration still assumes, for the most part, that the world is simple
and deterministic, but that could not be further from the truth.
... In a test-driven approach, system state is regulated by continual reappraisal at a microscopic level, like having a groundskeeper watch continuously over an estate, plucking the weeds or applying a lick
of paint where needed. Such an approach required the conceptual leap to a computable notion of
maintenance. Maintenance can be defined by referring to a policy or model for an ideal system state.
If such a model could somehow be described in terms of predictable, actionable repairs, in spite of
environmental indeterminism, then automating maintenance would become a simple reality. ...
The term compliance is often used today for correctness of state with respect to a model. If a system
deviates from its model, then with proper automation it self-repairs, 2,4 somewhat like an autopilot
that brings systems back on course. ... [T]hink about IT... in terms of goals rather than “building projects” ...
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