+ 7 Things System Administrators Forget to Do +

Out of the plethora of chores that we do each day, which ones make up the top seven activities of forgetful system administrators? To begin, you might ask yourselves if the answer is quantitative or qualitative. Let's think about it for a minute.

You could look at the number of times you forget something. If you did that, you might get a list of things like forgetting to set your alarm clock or showing up to work with unmatched socks. We need something scarier, like forgetting to turn off remote access through a VPN to an employee that just left the company.

In writing this article, I felt like the Simon Cowell of technologists, but in reverse. Out of many worthy candidates I could only pick seven, and Paula Abdul couldn't vote. Beside my own subjective view, I decided to consult other engineers. The men and women I consulted felt the criterion was obvious: administrators forget to do things that matter.

I could cite many reasons why they forget some critical tasks. Those reasons include doing jobs that normally take two or more people, having to provide break-fix services on hardware, covering for absentee help desk personnel or getting involved in pre-sale activities. Regardless, here is the compilation of the top seven things system administrators forget to do...