What sysadmin things should every programmer know?

I recently joined ServerFault; a new forum for system administrations, built by the same guys that developed Stack Overflow for programmers.

One of the first posts I came across asked:

“As a programmer, we tend to take sysadmins for granted. The few times I’ve been without a good sysadmin have really made me appreciate what you guys do. When we’re venturing into an environment without a sysadmin, what words of wisdom can you offer us?”

I love these sorts of questions.  I enjoy sharing what actually works in the real world and come up with the infrastructure to support best practices.

I have come across all sorts of information and advice for both programmers and sysadmins.  In this series, I’ll go over my response to this question and the background of why I believe this stuff.