54
votes

I try to religiously follow planet sysadmin as well as IBM developerworks.

Which ones do you read and advise to other system administrators?

2
  • 1
    +1 Excellent question. I've just gone through and dropped almost all of the sites below into my Google Reader. I love Google Reader -- subscribing is almost trivially easy, I can read it from almost anwhere (including my blackberry), and if the feed is too busy/boring/annoying/whatever, unsubscribing is just as easy. Joy! Jun 10, 2009 at 14:45
  • I personnally prefer running my own instance of Tiny Tiny RSS. (tt-rss.org/trac). It's free software, fast, very similar to reader in terms of features , and saves me from disclosing any more information to google. I have actually now come to prefer tt-rss overtime and would not switch back to reader.
    – tomdeb
    Jul 17, 2009 at 14:02

24 Answers 24

28
votes

Since every modern System Administrator should be using a feed reader, here's my selections from Google Reader [NOTE: These are RSS feeds, not the standard viewable sites themselves!]:

System Administration and Storage:

Security:

Tech/IT News:

Others that are important and popular among sysadmins:

5
  • How did you get the login to my google reader account? +1 for everything. I'd give you a bonus for listing my blog (Standalone Sysadmin), but I can only give one :-) Jun 10, 2009 at 16:21
  • techcrunch alone makes it impossible to follow all of them.
    – user3903
    Jun 13, 2009 at 21:36
  • Yeah, honestly, I don't read every post from techcrunch. I just skim through it every few days and then read any entries where the title jumps out at me. I probably only read about 5%-10% of it. But, there's still some good stuff on there! ;-) Jun 15, 2009 at 1:17
  • 2
    Wonder how many people knew what a great sysadmin site WWTDD.com is... Jun 15, 2009 at 22:52
  • I specifically listed it both last and among other sites that are not necessarily sysadmin specific or related, but that (in my experience) most sysadmins tend to enjoy. Jun 16, 2009 at 20:01
21
votes

I'm subscribed to the following in my feed reader:

There are a few others I have in my sysadmin category, but they may not be generally applicable. I'd also suggest reading a lot of sites that would be considered 'sites programmers should read' - hacker news, programming.reddit etc., but then I tend to have an interest in both programming and systems administration.

2
  • Seconded for Ben Rockwoods blog. That guy knows his stuff and actually walks the walk, rather than flapping his gums. I wish he would post more often Jun 10, 2009 at 14:47
  • Speaking of which; I wish he would produce some more SA Pro podcasts.
    – Dan Carley
    Jun 10, 2009 at 17:39
12
votes

On a regular basis? None.

In the end, most sites just end up being a time suck (like Server Fault?)

2
  • 4
    So true. I search the net if I have a specific issue, but I don't regularly read websites. Most just clutter my brain with stuff that is not quite applicable to my job. Jun 11, 2009 at 11:12
  • It's good to stay on top of things, though. I think a good sysadmin stays on top of happenings in their field of work. But the HUGE list above is ridiculous. I have 3 sites on my RSS reader (Slashdot, LWN.net and Wired) and I don't have time to keep up with all the discussion. Jul 28, 2010 at 17:13
7
votes

For some light reading you can't beat BOFH ;->

5
votes

Why slashdot.org of course!

5
votes

For when you just need to know that you're not the only one...

http://www.thedailywtf.com

4
votes

No one has mentioned Microsoft's Sysinternals Blog, which has the best advanced Windows troubleshooting information anywhere.

1
  • The forums are very good, too. Jan 11, 2010 at 0:36
3
votes

I read Hacker News. The name is misleading, as it rarely has any hacker news, but very informative stories on every tech-subject imaginable.

http://news.ycombinator.com/

2
votes

Of course this site !!!

Ok ! I'm leaving =====>[]

2
votes

If you are linux-y: http://freshmeat.net (turn up the odd free software gem)

If you work in a school: http://edugeek.net

If you want to be secure: http://isc.sans.org

2
votes

I have gazillions of technology and vendor specific feeds in my RSS reader. Too many, perhaps.

Those that haven't yet been mentioned and are relatively generic:

Datacenter Knowledge and Royal Pingdom often prove an interesting outlook about what's going on.

Not strictly websites, the NANOG and Outages lists can be helpful weather reports.

2
votes

I highly recommend Ars Technica in general, but a daily digest of the Server Room forum on their site is just awesome:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/frm/f/833003030931

Just tons of great info, especially on VMWare etc.

2
votes

I subscribe to several of the planet aggregators.

1
vote

My regularly read sysadmin related RSS feeds, excluding those listed above:

1
vote

HackADay is one of my favorites! It is good for killing time at work.

0
votes

The "Serious Hardware/Software Crap" and related forums at Something Awful I've found to be a source of solid advice, both for sysadmin and coding questions.

0
votes

The Joyeur blog, by Joyent. Sadly they don't seem to be posting much content these days. Are they even doing the podcast anymore ?

0
votes

I usually visist OSNews to see whats going on in the OS world (allthough it's a bit Linux-aimed)

0
votes

For getting a grip on the technology, digital life, and political zeitgeist, you might try popurls. The site is nicely designed and gives a reasonable way outside of a feed reader to grab quick look at the state of things. The advantage over a feed reader is that there is less of an urge to "deal" with everything and get it out of your "inbox" because there is no "inbox."

0
votes

I've cut back on my RSS reader dramatically. Mostly it's web comics, which is about 8 or 10 sites now.

I try to follow high quality content sources and interesting people on Twitter. Most of the blog authors I had in RSS are on Twitter and link their latest post. A lot of colleagues, friends and acquaintances I know in Ruby on Rails and Web Operations are on Twitter, and post links to blog posts, news articles and other sites I find valuable and interesting.

It's like getting a "best of" without having to sift through all the crap. Other people did it for me. It's the ultimate in laziness.

0
votes

asktheadmin.com always has good content. petri.co.il also has some awesome Windows articles and a large and active forum.

1
  • petri has been a great help for years
    – dyasny
    Mar 10, 2010 at 21:48

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