You’ve been dropped in the middle of a huge mess. Maybe you’re a first-time sysadmin. Maybe you’re replacing someone who felt that “the best documentation is between my ears”. Maybe your last job didn’t require much of you and now you’re freaking out.

To make things worse, your cries of help from management fall on deaf ears. Every request you make gets returned with a reply of “no budget available, maybe next year”.

If you’re taking on the role of sysadmin, you’re going to need to understand the underlying business reasons for decisions, effectively advocate within your company as to where IT investments should be made and document how your efforts are improving the efficiency and effectiveness of both your team and the company as a whole.

To help you achieve all of this, we’ve broken the tasks down into the following chapters: