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

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

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+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! – David Mackintosh Jun 10 '09 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 '09 at 14:02
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24 Answers

up vote 22 down vote

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.

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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 – Dave Cheney Jun 10 '09 at 14:47
Speaking of which; I wish he would produce some more SA Pro podcasts. – Dan Carley Jun 10 '09 at 17:39
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up vote 21 down vote

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:

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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 :-) – Matt Simmons Jun 10 '09 at 16:21
techcrunch alone makes it impossible to follow all of them. – Peteris Krumins Jun 13 '09 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! ;-) – Christopher Cashell Jun 15 '09 at 1:17
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Wonder how many people knew what a great sysadmin site WWTDD.com is... – Jon Rhoades Jun 15 '09 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. – Christopher Cashell Jun 16 '09 at 20:01
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up vote 10 down vote

On a regular basis? None.

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

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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. – 20th Century Boy Jun 11 '09 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. – Luke has no name Jul 28 '10 at 17:13
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up vote 7 down vote

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

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up vote 5 down vote

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

http://www.thedailywtf.com

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up vote 4 down vote

Why slashdot.org of course!

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up vote 4 down vote

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

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The forums are very good, too. – Joe Internet Jan 11 '10 at 0:36
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up vote 2 down vote

Of course this site !!!

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

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up vote 2 down vote

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

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up vote 2 down vote

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.

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up vote 2 down vote

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.

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up vote 2 down vote

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/

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up vote 2 down vote

I subscribe to several of the planet aggregators.

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up vote 1 down vote

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

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up vote 1 down vote

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

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up vote 0 down vote

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.

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up vote 0 down vote

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

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up vote 0 down vote

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

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up vote 0 down vote

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."

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up vote 0 down vote

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.

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up vote 0 down vote

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

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petri has been a great help for years – dyasny Mar 10 '10 at 21:48
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