SysAdmin Weekly Newsletter Issue #20: Managed Chaos Beats No Plan At All

[asyrewicze]

Hey folks 👋

Issue #20 of the SysAdmin Weekly Newsletter is out, and this week we’re leaning into the unsexy but mission-critical side of the job: incident response planning and backup / DR reality checks.

Early in the year is the perfect (and often ignored) time to revisit the stuff we all assume is “probably fine”:

• Incident response plans that haven’t been reviewed in years
• Backup strategies that exist more in theory than practice
• Recovery assumptions that have never been tested under stress

No judgement! I get it. I've been there. Users are loud, mail breaks weekly, and your backlog is infinite. IR and DR planning rarely feel urgent… until they suddenly are.

Other items in this newsletter edition include:

• Why I'm OBSESSED with markdown
• Curiosity and Training Discussions
• Relevant markdown and technical documentation resources
• And more!

All newsletter entries can be found here > https://newsletter.sysadminweekly.com
All other relevant SysAdmin Weekly links can be found here > https://www.sysadminweekly.com

🎙 Featured Podcast Episode

This issue of the newsletter pairs with:

SysAdmin Weekly #037 – When Incident Response Plans Meet Reality

In this episode Eric and I cover:

• What actually belongs in an incident response plan
• Who needs to be involved (and who doesn’t)
• How often to run table-top exercises, and why they matter
• Why “we’ll figure it out when it happens” is not a plan

It’s not flashy. It is practical.

Why This Matters

An annual review of your IR and backup / DR plans can:

• Expose real technical gaps
• Re-align stakeholders who’ve quietly moved on
• Shorten outages and reduce chaos
• Protect company data
• Instantly justify your salary the moment something breaks

The key point is this: Chaos without a plan is just chaos. Chaos with a plan is managed chaos and managed chaos keeps you and your org out of headlines.

💬 Join the Conversation

Have a story?

• An IR plan that saved the day
• A backup that didn’t restore
• A “we thought we were covered… we weren’t” moment

There’s a discussion thread collecting real-world wins and horror stories. Jump in both are welcome.

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If nothing else, let this issue be your reminder to block some calendar time and ask:

“If this broke tomorrow… would we actually be ready?”

Stay frosty ☃️
— Andy