When I think about the iPad as a sysadmin's tool, I don't think about it in terms of can/can't. Obviously, the iPad can be a sysadmin tool. Heck, I used Windows Mobile 6 phones as sysadmin tools. It wasn’t a lot of fun, but if you were really far from a laptop, tin cans with string, or a sharp stick and soft dirt, you could do it. Prior to getting my first iPad, I used my iPhone to some effect. The truth is you can use an iPhone (or really, any smartphone) as a sysadmin tool as long as you have a decent Web browser and few key apps. But it is not a particularly enjoyable experience.

Yes, I know, “sysadmin” and “enjoyable” seem like they’re mutually exclusive. The small screen of the iPhone, and the small size of its keyboard have always made it one of those “if you have to" tools. Things like VNC or other similar remote logins were... well, you can do those sorts of things on an iPhone, but I always tried to avoid it. It’s easier to drive home to the MacBook Pro than use the iPhone.

The iPad, on the other hand, is quite enjoyable to use for sysadmin tasks. For one, the size is just about perfect. It’s big enough that even my ape-like paws can type at a reasonable speed, manipulate screen elements, etc. It’s not so big that you can’t easily carry it, but it’s big enough that you can wedge it into a rack or prop it up on a CD tray so the display is easily accessible. I find a decent flashlight app is just perfect for illuminating tiny, hard-to-read serial numbers, but it’s not so big that you can’t work with it in the limited space behind a typical rack in a small server room. Don’t get me wrong, I love my 17” MacBook Pro and am definitely a fan of that beast. But there are times when it’s just too big for the situation and an iPhone is too small. The iPad’s superior battery life is also of no small comfort when you’re in a situation where you won’t be able to plug the device into AC power for some time. Naturally, you never have an AC adapter and power cord when you need one (I swear, there’s a wall space full of them, all giggling at my frustration).

The iPad—as hardware

While I have a solid collection of tools on my iPad, the real advantage isn’t what it runs. It’s the way the size and form contribute to how I use it. For example, it’s much easier to take notes on an iPad than an iPhone. Siri is nice, but being able to use the “real” interface for my helpdesk Web UI instead of their rather odd mobile version? Much nicer. Mail on the iPad is actually a better app than Mail on Mac OS, especially when paired with a decent set of server-side rules. Sure, there’s an iPhone client for things like WebEx and Adobe Connect for the various impromptu meetings I have to be a part of. But the advantage of the iPad’s screen size is inarguable in those situations. If I need to wedge it up against a wall or in a rack, I can do that and still be able to see the screen clearly, even from bit of a distance. The iPhone is smaller, but reading that screen from a meter or more away is not easy.

When I’m looking at things like data charts in Cacti or service status in Nagios, the ability of the iPad to display multiple items at a readable size means I spend less effort reading and more of my time analyzing. The less time I spend acquiring data, the more time I have for other things. The analysis is going to take the same amount of time regardless of how long I need to gather the data. If I can speed up that part of the process (and rather a lot of sysadmin needs are getting and analyzing data), I get done sooner. The iPad may not have things like SD card slots, but I've had devices with those things. Other than cameras, I find the implementations of SD cards to be so poor that not having them hasn’t been an actual problem for me. Besides, I have a good wireless network. Do I really want to deal with small, easily lost, hard-to-label bits of plastic? No I do not.

Finally, when I’m doing my “IT by walking around” thing, the iPad is a better tool than any other I’ve had. It's less awkward than a laptop, and more functional than a phone. If someone is having a problem, I can SSH into their Mac or remote into their Windows machine while they’re having the problem in front of me. Being able to troubleshoot the problem as it’s happening instead of trying to duplicate it hours or days later is a huge advantage.

While the apps available on the platform are indeed important, it is the platform itself that makes all the difference. Even when I worked in a mostly Windows network, I still ran things from a Mac—the platform just gave me more capability than traditional Wintel. The design of the iPad, both the physical device and iOS, has been the major factor in it moving from an adjunct to a tool I rely on almost as much as my MacBook Pro.

So the iPad itself is great, but face it—you need apps too. What apps are of use to a sysadmin in this case? Well, let’s walk through my day a bit.

The iPad (and apps) in daily workflow

First, there’s the obligatory “While laptop is starting and logging in” checks. When I first started in this business, monitoring networks meant really expensive platform-specific programs, or worse, dedicated hardware that could cost tens of thousands of dollars. Neither worked well outside of a narrow range of very expensive hardware. Now? Pretty much any server or device on my network can be monitored via SNMP. For that, all I need is a Web browser. I log into our internal IT landing page and log into Nagios and Cacti, and via some custom views, make sure that things are running OK. All of this is done via HTML. No Java needed. Within a few minutes, I can check on servers across the country, not only for up/down settings, but to see if critical services are edging from “OK” to “not OK.” Nothing more than Safari needed.

If anything gets to the warning/critical stage, I get e-mails on it. Barring nothing actually being wrong or needing changing, I can really run most of my day on Safari and Mail with ease. And when things need to be updated or changed? The answer really depends on what we’re talking about.

If the server/desktop in question is a Mac or Linux box, I can get a lot done over SSH. For that, Prompt from Panic is awesome. Cabel and the gang really looked not just at making an SSH client, but one that is designed to work well on an iPad. Would I write an extensive shell or python script on an iPad? Probably not. There are things like large-scale typing that I just personally hate to do on a flat piece of glass. Fortunately, most of my SSH interactions are short commands and watching logs scroll. In terms of server support, there’s very little I can’t do on my iPad.