A really nice article written by George Reese (twitter profile here).

As I am a Systems Administrator (which also administrates some cloud instances) and am working with a software development company (amongst others), this article has some interesting quotes like:

• The cloud, however, has a nasty habit of deluding programmers into thinking they no longer need sys admins.
• A programmer and a credit card can launch a server in the cloud.
• The programmer, however, lacks a detailed understanding of ongoing infrastructure management.
• The reverse is true of the sys admins who fancy themselves programmers. They can craft Perl programs to do just about any task. Those programs, however, ultimately lack the solid architecture that programming skills provide.
• Programmers Build Bad Machine Images
• Sys admins live and breathe hardware, the OS, and the network.

You can read the full article here