Hiring a sysadmin - what to look for

[Izi]

I run a few web servers, which I can manage fine, but would prefer they were looked after by someone who knows sysadmin better than I do. I am better with Windows than I am with Linux, and this is a big sticking point.

So my question is, if I am hiring a freelance sysadmin, what qualifications should I look out for? If I were to hire sysadmin from abroad, is this a bad idea?

How much should I be looking at paying a sysadmin per hour? (Linux and Windows if it makes a difference)

Thanks for any input.

P.S if any of you fancy offering your services as a sysadmin, then give me a shout.

 

[Izi]

Sorry I should have been more clear. This is solely for software support. I.E help administering Linux boxes. We do have engineers onsite for hardware. I also meant to post this in Servers, whoops. If a mod reads, please could this be moved?

 

[Izi]

What distro are you using? RHCE would be desirable if it's RedHat - even if it's not, much if not most of it would be transferrable depending on which Linux you are using.

Despite qualifications, experience will be just as good a guide. Someone that's previously spent time working for an ISP will have a good understanding of mail, DNS, networking, apache etc which is probably what you're after.

What do you mean by freelance... a few hours a week or something? As above you might find it cheaper to just get a proper managed service (which would save grief with hardware as well: site spares, 1hr response time etc).

Currently using CentOS.

Only issue with manage vs self managed is cost. Baring in mind, once set very little maintenance needs to be done.

For example, dedicated box £50 from OVH. Cheapest managed servers are £150 +

I'll only need a couple hours once every few months. And someone on standby should anything go wrong.

Its more about helping secure backups, make sure security is up to date etc.

 

[Izi]

I take it the web servers are in house and not hosted somewhere remotly? If they are just web servers I would have moved everything over to a real web host and just let them deal with it.

Depends what you are hosting ovcourse.

They are in a proper server house? This is simply for help with Linux administration.

 

[Izi]

Give him some challenges and see if he can solve them, like configuring mail servers, web servers etc. Set up a virtual private server for him to play with. I guess you could use Skype screen sharing or something.

Despite me having a thread teaching Python, I have still been rejected for Python programming jobs due to lack of formal qualifications etc, so its not a good measure of skill. I hope to build some sort of portfolio to counter this.

Yeah, this is the best way. For programming, we don't bother with qualifications. We ask what open source projects they have helped out with. If they have worked on open source products, its often more than enough to tell a developers skill.

I'd say a minimum of £50 an hour for a good freelancer, with good experience, doing real work who you have a relationship with. Assuming you want them managing your boxes consistently, you'd be better off paying a consistant monthly fee to ensure everything keeps working, as opposed to jumping up and down when you find out something's broke. (In particular, make sure you have a proper DR solution).

Truth is you could do a lot worse than that, money wise, you could probably do better if you were willing to hire a kid, or someone not in the country. It's all relative really, but luckily it's an online job so you can hire from poor areas if need be.

I've been working in the hosting industry for the last 5 years, thus could maybe recommend a few people if you given a bit more info.

Good advice. I suppose the other reason I want a freelancer is so they can 'teach' relay how to do basic tasks back to the office. We need a kick start rather than just learn over time and slowly, as we are have time constraints.

 

[Izi]

Actually teaching someone to be a competent sys-admin would take a matter of years, require some luck, and be typically up to the individual to put the required work in.

Rather than stipulating a requirment to teach, I would stipulate the requirement to document. If you have clear and concise documentation, you should be able to hire replacements, or do it yourself when the need arises.

You could also be able to find programmers who aren't pure programmers and save money doing this. Thats kinda the niche I like to fill, and if you'd posted a month ago I may have been trying to sell myself.



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Do you find a lot of people this way? Despite being an advocate, I've never released anything open source. All my work is bought and paid for.

Good idea.

Yes we have, but most we have hired people when they have sent in private projects which they have then explained what they have done. I.E not open source, but still their code. Still, you know you have a keen coder when they participate in OS projects.