I forgot how to manage a server
The three pitfalls TFA mentions are the reason why I enforce the following rules around operations automation at my company:<p>1. Only that should be automated what can be done manually.<p>Before automating something, a sysadmin must be able to manually carry out the same operation. If they do not understand how it works, without using someone else&#x27;s scripts, they are ineligible to administrate it.<p>2. What has been automated should always be doable manually.<p>After something has been automated, a new sysadmin should be able to read the automation code and re-do the steps manually. Maybe not at the full scale of repeating actions manually on every server, but enough that if the automation tools are irrecoverably lost they can be rebuilt from knowledge.<p>This also serves as a test for adequate documentation in the automation code. A new sysadmin should not have trouble figuring out why a certain thing is done a certain way in the scripts.<p>3. What happens, even when automated, should not be hidden from the sysadmin<p>Even in full auto, what&#x27;s going on is always visible, so a sysadmin can jump in (i.e., go full-manual) at any step. This was one of our earliest rules, because we (me &amp; my teammates) wanted to be able to debug without friction if anything went wrong. Also, it looks cool(er).<p>----<p>As a guiding principle behind how we automate operations, we assert that no amount of automation is replacement for a sysadmin&#x27;s skills; it replaces only manual, error-prone effort.