Windows Tip: Laziness as a Virtue

April 19, 2006 —

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What would you do if you were a business owner and you walked into your sysadmin's office and saw him with his feet up on his desk reading a magazine? Fire him? Or offer him a raise?

Laziness is defined as a disinclination to work or exert effort, and it's generally viewed as a negative character trait. But what appears on the surface to be laziness may actually be a sign of an energetic, vigorous personality who prefers to work hard and do what's needed and then later take a much-deserved break. What I'm talking about is proactive system administration -- putting in a concentrated effort to get your systems properly deployed and configured so they will run smoothly, then implementing a monitoring system that keeps your fingers on the pulse of your IT infrastructure. The moment something goes wrong, you know about it, and if you've done your homework ahead of time you also know how to deal with problems quickly and effectively when they arise.

Rodney Buike, a Microsoft MVP who runs a site called The Lazyadmin.com, puts it like this: "Being a lazy admin means following best practices and using the tools available to be proactive about maintenance. SMS 2003, MOM 2005, WSUS and the slew of Microsoft best practices analyzers can help by automating updates and application deployments as well as monitoring servers and services. This enables you to find and fix small problems before they pile up into larger issues. Proper planning, implementation and proactive maintenance will maximize system availability and minimize the occurrence of issues, allowing you to put your feet up on the desk, relax, and be a lazy admin."

I think this is a great philosophy to encourage your IT staff to follow. What about you? How proactive are you in running your Windows-based infrastructure? What monitoring tools do you use to find and fix problems before they blow up and become harder to address? Let me know and I'll share your ideas with our readers in a future newsletter. Meanwhile, if you're a cost-conscious management type and you're concerned about the idea of your sysadmin looking "lazy" like this, well, don't worry -- if your administrator is smart enough to be proactive in managing your company's infrastructure, she's probably also shrewd enough to install an alarm on her door that signals her anytime someone is coming down the hall so she has time to hide her magazine and get her feet off her desk and look busy

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